


From Across the Silence

by UneSalade



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Angst, Friends to Lovers, How Do I Tag, Hurt/Comfort, I'm 85 percent certain, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Phone Calls & Telephones, Slow Burn, Suicide Attempt, Suicide Hotline, You know what you're getting into, there will be more fun things to tag as we go along, this is DEH, warmline, you betcha this is gonna burn slow
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2020-11-28 16:08:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 34,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20969318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UneSalade/pseuds/UneSalade
Summary: "So there he was, sobbing apologies into the receiver--because of course his first call would be with someone who wants to kill themselves, and of course his supervisor would suddenly disappear from the room they were supposed to be supervising, and just how unlucky could you be to not only want to die, but also to make the effort to reach out for help only to be saddled with an incompetent, blubbering mess like Evan fucking Hansen?"In which Evan volunteers at the local warmline, and gets a bit more than what he signed up for.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Though explained in part throughout the first chapter, I'd like to clarify that Evan is working at a warmline, which is distinct from a suicide hotline in that it's not limited to crisis calls. All procedures/protocols based on my own experience.
> 
> (also thanks for bearing with the brief canon rehash at the beginning--it gets different real quick!)

The first call Evan answered on the local warmline, he'd started crying harder than his caller less than two minutes in.

Granted, it was the first call he had taken without a volunteer supervisor listening in and basically ready to rip the phone from his face at any moment--because Evan hates talking on the phone, and hates having someone's life in his sweaty, sweaty hands even more, and no one should have trusted him to do something like this in the first place. But Dr. Sherman had insisted that "exposure therapy" was the right way to go in overcoming anxieties like these, Evan, there won't be many crisis calls, just people looking for a little connection, and I'm more than positive that you'll be a great listener with just the right words someone needs to hear. His mom, of course, thought that was such a great idea, honey, I'm Proud of you already, and went so far as to offer to leave work just to drive him to his weekly shifts after school. So there he was, sobbing apologies into the receiver--because of course his first call would be with someone who wants to kill themselves, and of course his supervisor would suddenly disappear from the room they were supposed to be supervising, and just how unlucky could you be to not only want to die, but also to make the effort to reach out for help only to be saddled with an incompetent, blubbering mess like Evan fucking Hansen?

"Hey, don't cry," said the girl he was supposed to be consoling. "It's alright. I'm sorry you're feeling upset."

It figured that he'd have a total meltdown at the most inappropriate place at the worst possible time. He could feel the eyes of the other volunteers flitting over the shitty, functionally useless plastic dividers between their desks and burning into the back of his head.

"I'm so sorry," he gasped, "this isn't helpful at all--"

"No, you're--you're doing great. Really." She cleared her throat and sniffed wetly. "I think I'm feeling better."

"You don't have to--no, please, I'm sorry, I can connect you with someone else here--"

"No, I mean it. I think…" she took a long, quiet breath. "I think I don't want to hurt myself anymore. At least, not right now."

"Oh," Evan croaked. "That's…that's great."

"Yeah."

"I'm glad you're. Uh. Feeling better."

"Thank you," she whispered.

"If you...if you do feel like that again, please call us. I'm--we're always here. To listen. Or--or to talk."

"I will," she says, and Evan thinks, Evan really, really hopes she means it. "And what about you?"

"Me?"

"Are you feeling better?"

"Yeah," he says weakly, heat crawling up his neck, "I'm sorry I--"

"You just saved my life," she interjects. "Please don't apologize."

"O.K.," he whispers.

They breathe into the phone together for what seemed like a long while, taking turns sniffling (or in Evan's case, sucking up gobs of snot that would have otherwise dripped down his chin, because he's always been an ugly crier). Then the girl sighs. "I'm going to get some sleep."

"Oh, yeah, that--that sounds good. I hope you get some rest."

"Thanks again for listening."

"Of course."

"Take care of yourself."

"You too."

He puts the phone back into the receiver and stares at the sweaty handprint he left on the plastic. He's pretty sure the only reason why it didn't slip out of his hand was because he was gripping it so hard that his fingers were definitely going to ache tomorrow. There's a burst of laughter to his right, where one of the other volunteers (Greg? Carl?) seemed to be having a great time talking about the many varieties of goat cheese they have at the local farmers market. Evan starts typing up his call notes, vaguely considering making a simple, relatively common request for a headset, and just how much he can fuck that up. He winces just a little bit when he checks the box for 'Suicidal intent'? He winces a lot more when Alana Beck claps her hand on his shoulder and shoots him a blindingly wide, impossibly white smile.

"Evan!" she exclaims brightly. "I didn't know you volunteered for the local warmline as well!"

"Hi, Alana," he mumbles, "yeah, I just, I started a few weeks ago--"

"I've been volunteering since I was 15, even though the minimum age to volunteer is normally 18. I managed to convince them of my maturity and substantial prior experience providing companionship to seniors at assisted living facilities around the community--"

Evan does not mention that they also let him volunteer even though he was 17, partly because it would mean telling her that his therapist had forced him to do this because he has a crippling fear of talking on the phone, but mostly because Alana has already started talking about the several hundreds of hours she's accrued at various other volunteering organizations, and he wishes more than anything that someone would call in. Which he guesses he could call progress, but only because he hates awkwardly trying to ignore the not-so-subtle glares from the volunteers around him as Alana loudly remarks upon how fulfilling and steadfast her dedication to civic duty is more than talking on the phone with some random stranger about the weather and/or suicide.

When the phone does finally ring, he hits his cast against the desk in his rush to pick it up, sending a sharp stab of pain that runs along his bones and up to his watering eyes as he silently apologizes to Alana (who has already skipped off to talk to his supervisor, who seems to have come out of her office at just the wrong time, given the stiff smile she gives Alana and the empty mug of coffee she whiteknuckles like she'll maul someone if she doesn't).

"Hi--hello, this is Evan. From the Peer Support Warmline."

"Evan, hey, this is Randy. I don't think we've talked before. But, oh my god, you won't believe what _bullshit_ my granddaughter told me today--"

Evan spends the rest of his shift nodding pointlessly and 'Mmmhmm'ing along to Randy, Evelyn, Kyu, Sarah, Pete, Keith, Sasha, Lacretia, Millie, Frank, and someone who just screamed about how the federal government was destroying the earth for a solid fifteen minutes (which was frightening and aggressive, because Evan wasn't sure if he was mad at him eighty percent of the time, though he honestly had to agree with the main points of his tirade). When he walks back home that evening, he's exhausted and sweaty and his back hurts from sitting so still for so long because his chair squeaked with any slight movement or shift in weight, and he had annoyed everyone in the room enough already. He's so tired that he answers one final call that day without thinking as he's watching his Trader Joe's dumplings spin slowly in the microwave. "Evan," his mom says with a surprised tilt to her voice. "You answered on the first ring."

"Oh. Yeah. I mean--you called."

"Yes. I did call." She sounds so pleasantly surprised and excited, like she can hardly believe her luck that her pathetic, loser of a son can finally do something so basic as pick up the phone. "This is--well, first off, how was your shift? Are you still shadowing other volunteers?"

"No," he sighs, "I had my first calls today. It was--" awkward and nerve-wracking, someone might have died because I didn't know what to say, the best part of it was when I didn't have to say anything at all, which turned out to be every call after that call where someone wanted to die, "--good. It went well."

"Wow, Evan. I'm just--I'm so proud of you," and he hates how much she means it, the hope weighing down her words. "I knew it: this is going to be our year, buddy. It's happening already."

The microwave beeps and he takes his plate of three fourths soggy, one fourths uncooked misshapen vegetable paste out to cool on the counter. "Yeah," he says, because he can't think anything else to say. "I guess."

"So I need to cover Erica again, and I'm going to class right after. So I won't be home until late--"

"O.K."

"--but there's Trader Joe's dumplings in the freezer, and--hey, you could even order a pizza tonight. How about that? I left you a twenty on the counter this morning."

He eyes the twenty that was still lying on the counter and thinks about having to stutter out his order and his address and waiting for the delivery person to knock on his door only to wait for Evan to count out change that he will inevitably spill all over the floor and/or inevitably just throw at their face to end the interaction, so Evan can sit quietly on the couch and guiltily eat a twelve dollar pizza he just blew twenty dollars on. "Maybe tomorrow. I already microwaved the dumplings."

"Tomorrow sounds great, honey," she says softly, so heartbreakingly hopeful. "Shoot--I got to go. Remember to write one of those letters to yourself, alright?"

"O.K., Mom."

"Have a good night, Evan--love you!"

"I love--" the phone beeps, and it's so shockingly loud that he starts. Heart pounding faithlessly in his chest, he puts it back into the receiver and walks his plate to the living room, trying not to think of how the call center phones don't actually beep when a call ends, so you can't really tell if someone's hung up or just breathing very quietly unless you look at the screen on the console, or that he's never actually had to end a call before in his entire life.

He especially tries not to think about how school is starting in a few days, and how he's almost positive that this is most definitely not going to be 'his year,' because it never is. Which means it's definitely not going to be his mom's year, because she's still stuck with him.

So he finishes his dumplings, tries to ignore Alana's Facebook post about how great it was to bump into "fellow-civic-minded acquaintance of mine, @Evan Hansen, at the @PeerSupportWarmline!" (and especially tries to ignore how three random people liked her post, one of whom included Jared, who responded with a laugh, who will never let Evan hear the end of it now), and goes to bed composing a letter in his head, because guilt is his default mood on good days, which he supposes today could count as one, and here's why:

_Because someone didn't hurt themselves today, even though it was only because you showed them just how much more pathetic life could be._

_Sincerely, your best and most dearest friend,_  
_ Me_

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When his mom suggested that he ask people to sign his cast, he knew it was a set-up for failure and embarrassment.

But she still had this fragile hope lighting up her face, lifting all the lines and bags that he's been putting on her over the years. Like his newfound ability to pick up a phone and mumble an incoherent greeting into it was a sign that he was 'getting better.' Or that all the copays they've been pouring into Dr. Sherman's wallet haven't been a complete waste. Either way, he wasn't going to willingly burst her bubble of pride that he didn't earn; he owed her that much, to play along for as long as she believes this new invention of progress she's concocted about his life.

So here he was, listening to Alana Beck talk about how her grandma slipped in the tub and died, sharpie held out in front of him like he's about to commit seppuku. Which he guesses he is, in a way. Except there is no honor in any of this.

"Anyway," she takes a deep breath and smiles, broad and brilliant, "you _are_ a good listener. But of course--we only staff the best! I'll see you at the call center?"

"Oh, thanks, yeah, I'll see--" he says to her back as she marches purposefully down the hallway at Olympic-level powerwalking speed to very purposefully wish another student she somehow knew by first and last name and home address a great first day. He sighs and pockets his sharpie.

"Did you break your arm from jerking off too much?" Jared titters loudly from behind him. "Or did you get too excited whipping it out at your new job as phone sex operator?"

"_Jared_," he hisses, "please don't say that--"

"Ah, so he can neither confirm nor deny," Jared smirks and leans against someone's locker just as they're about to open it. Evan's not sure if he's pretending not to notice the death glare they're directing at the back of his head, or if he actually just didn't really notice. "I bet Zoe Murphy would _love_ to get a referral."

"No, it's not a--it's not, it's just a warmline."

"Like a suicide hotline?" Jared eyes him skeptically. "You? Talking someone down? Last time we talked on the phone--because my mom wanted to talk to your mom, mind you, and was too damn lazy to call her herself--I was pretty sure you were having an aneurysm."

Evan does not say that he also shares his disbelief. "Well, no--I mean, sometimes we get crisis calls, but it's mostly just people who want to, like. Talk."

"About sex? Tree fetishes? Cripple fantasies--"

"About anything, Jared," he huffs, because he's also not going to tell him it's for lonely, friendless strangers with some likely assortment of mental illnesses, because that makes it sound sadder than it already does. "And I broke my arm from falling out of a tree. Since I was a junior park ranger at Ellison Park over the summer, so, you know--"

Jared bursts into jarring laughter. "You fell out of a _tree_?" He wipes a fake tear from the side of his eye. "What are you, an _acorn_?"

"Just--" Evan sighs and pulls out his sharpie again. "Do you want to sign my cast?"

He stares at him uncomprehendingly. "Why would I want to sign your cast?"

"Because, well, I mean--"

"Hey, Connor," Jared calls out somewhere over Evan's shoulder, where a tall, dark, and very menacing Connor Murphy is indeed standing a few feet away from them. "Loving the new hair cut. Very...school shooter chic."

And everything else that followed--from Connor turning around and shoving Evan to the ground; to Evan being a sweaty, stuttering mess with Zoe; to getting called up to the board to answer a math question he barely understood; to missing the first ten minutes of the class immediately after that trying to remember how to breathe in the bathroom; to getting glared at by the librarian when he crinkled his lunch bag too loudly; to Connor storming out of the computer lab with his letter--it all felt weirdly inevitable. Like, regardless of the fact that he can now pick up the phone on the first ring (which is a hardly a life-changing skill, because who would even want to talk to Evan anyway, other than his mom? Telemarketers? The IRS?), shitty things just keep happening to Evan, because that's just how he is.

He doesn't say it in so many words when he's picking at his cast in front of Dr. Sherman, but based on how he's frowning down at Evan and scribbling across his notepad, Evan guessed he got the point across.

"That's why we're writing these letters, Evan," he tilts his head and smiles sadly at him, a professionally sympathetic furrow between his brows. "You're already making great progress. Just stay positive and give it time--the world is what we make of it, you know?"

Evan shrugs and tries not to think about how much money his mom has spent for him to listen to platitudes for an hour every week and not get better. "I guess."

Dr. Sherman sighs, apparently also tired with his helpful one- to two-word responses. "You have a shift at the call center today, right?"

"Yeah."

"Well, keep up the good work. I know the people who call in really appreciate it," he closes his notepad with a pleased nod. "You've always been a good listener, Evan. You'll soon realize that you can be a great conversationalist too--because listening is a big part of what makes a good conversation."

"Thanks, Dr. Sherman," Evan mumbles, trying his best to look like he wasn't literally running out of his office. Even though he definitely was.

Dr. Sherman's office was a convenient five blocks away from the call center. Which was also conveniently ten blocks away from the local psychiatric hospital. Evan tried not to think about how coincidental that was, or how many people who knew Dr. Sherman and/or volunteered at the call center ended up getting committed. Or if Dr. Sherman would make him volunteer at the psychiatric hospital next so he can learn how to talk to people who probably don't even want to see or talk to anybody ever again.

So instead, Evan thought about how he was a little worried at first that he wouldn't have time to do homework or study with his Monday and Wednesday evenings taken up by phone calls. Because they told him that they were short on people on those shifts, and even though Evan had originally wanted to do afternoon shifts on the weekends, he also has a complete inability to say no. But then he remembered that he doesn't have friends and would usually spend the same amount of time moping around the internet and being sad and lonely. So.

So Evan supposed he didn't really mind the smiles some of the other volunteers shoot his way when he slinks his way to his desk in the back corner. Or the way his cast clacks against the keyboard gleaming with years and years of oily fingers recording the anxieties and despair of their county. Or the way his heart still pounded every time the phone rang, which was all the time, or how his pores still generated at least three people's worth of sweat every time he had to stutter out his name and a partially incoherent greeting. Because at least, in a way, he was a part of something. Even if that something was making occasional sounds of agreement and sympathy with angry grandmothers and recently single teens.

"I'm sorry," he told a sobbing thirty-year-old man who was both fired and divorced on the same day. "Yeah, I'm--I'm really sorry," he repeated, helpfully.

"It's just--why me?" Bill whimpered. "What did I do to deserve this? How did I end up being such a mess?"

Something Evan wonders every day. "I'm sorry," he says again, because he's one of those pull-string dolls with a total of maybe five phrases coded in. "You don't--no one deserves that."

"How do you know that?" Bill sounds angry now, a sudden breakthrough of accusatory and acrid lucidity, and Evan is Not Equipped or Sufficiently Trained for this. "You don't even know me. I could be a--a fucking axe murderer, and you'd still tell me I don't deserve what's coming for me."

"I don't--I mean--"

"Or rather, what came for me," Bill pauses as his voice cracks. Then sobs harder than before. "Fuck, I can't _believe_ this is happening--"

"I'm sorry," Evan mumbles again, twisting the phone cord around and around his fingers until they're choked into a pulsing red. "I'm so sorry."

They cycle through this for another twenty minutes, because even though they're technically supposed to limit each call to ten minutes, Evan doesn't know how to smoothly end a phone call without sounding rude or mean or getting them so angry that they ask for Evan in particular to be fired and/or decide to report the call center to whatever call center powers that be to shut them down for their terrible service. But then, after yelling at Evan for only pretending to care about his problems, Bill sighs, says he's going to get drunk, thanks him for listening, and abruptly hangs up. Evan slowly puts the phone back into the receiver and tries to breathe quietly through his nose. He jumps when someone clasps him on the shoulder.

"Tough call?" One of the volunteers (Mei, he thinks--she goes to the community college across town) smiles sympathetically at him.

"You could say that," Evan laugh-wheezes.

She nods sagely. "I'd say you'll get used to it, but I don't think you really can."

Evan nods mutely. He didn't think he'd get used to any of this, in general.

"Well, hey, I just wanted to let you know that I'm heading out. Do you think you'll be able to hold down the fort? The overnight shift won't be here for another hour or so."

"Is there no one--" That's when Evan notices the sea of empty chairs and black computer screens and total lack of ringing phones surrounding him. "Oh."

"Don't worry about it," Mei waves her hands placatingly, like maybe she just noticed his rising panic. "Jenna--she's your supervisor, right?--is still around, somewhere, if you need help."

Evan tries and fails to not worry about it. But he gives her a probably not very reassuring smile anyway. "Yeah, I'll be--I'll be fine."

"Thanks so much--Eric, right?" Evan nods and does not let that sting, because she tried, and he's not sure he knows her name for certain either. "Have a good night!"

"Good night," he tells the empty room. He turns around slowly in his chair and starts typing up his notes, trying not to think about how loud he types, or how late it's getting, or how hard it's getting to breathe. He checks the boxes: Not a first time caller. No Suicidal Intent. Problems presented: Relationship concerns, Employment concerns, Housing concerns, Addiction, Depression, Loneliness (that was assumed of everyone who called into the warmline). He finishes his note and stares at the call log on the home page. Rows and rows and rows of lonely people.

The air conditioning hummed somewhere behind the walls, blasting cold air on the back of Evan's neck and raising goosebumps along his arm. He doesn't know what the call volume is like on Monday nights. Or what times the people having a very, very hard time started calling in. So far, it seemed like people have hard times at all times of day. Evan knows he does. Maybe he'll luck out, and just get some kid bored out of their mind getting high on a school night. Or a retired person interested in giving him running commentary on the latest rerun of _Friends_. He's definitely gotten calls like that before around now. What are the odds that everyone in their somewhat large county is having an uneventful and emotionally stable Monday night at the end of the summer?

When the phone rings, Evan had almost convinced himself that this was going to be one of those routine calls where he could just nod pointlessly and make encouraging sounds for ten minutes—he'd already had his standard half-garbled greeting at the tip of his tongue, and delivered it with a surprising smoothness he didn't think he'd ever pull off. But then he heard the heavy breathing, the sharp gasps and half-choked growls, and he knew he was absolutely, totally, utterly, horribly wrong.

"H-hello?" Evan says. "Are you—are you O.K.?"

The person on the line laughs harshly, sending hot static into Evan's ear and out his pores. "In a few minutes when I'm dead, yeah."

And Evan is fucked, so, so, so _fucked_\--"Do you—do you plan on—did you--"

"Do I plan on killing myself? What part of 'in a few minutes' did you not understand?"

"No, I—I understand--"

"What the fuck do you think you _understand_?" The person yells, voice going high and brittle. "I fucking call this stupid line, because I'm so pathetic that I think that talking to some stranger who doesn't even know me, who wouldn't give two _fucks_ about me if they actually did, would make this any fucking easier without calling the fucking cops, like a legitimate suicide hotline," Evan hears a rattle, hard clacks like rain on plastic or falling dominoes, and it's close enough to make him shiver, "and I get a fucking _idiot_ who can't even say a complete sentence!"

"I'm sorry," Evan stares blindly at the suicide assessment protocol pinned above every desk in the call center, willing himself to breathe, to say something right for once in his life. "I'm so sorry--"

"Of course you're sorry—everyone will be so fucking _sorry_ when the freak finally kills himself. And then they'll remember just how much they hated him and how much better the fucking world is without him terrorizing his sister, making his mom fucking cry, disappointing his fucking asshole of a dad, being a fucking _monster_\--"

"You aren't—but they'll miss you," Evan tries. "They'll—"

"You don't know my fucking family," the bottle rattles near then far, and Evan thinks of fifty ulnas cracking, one after the other, "they'll be so relieved when I'm finally out of the picture. They can finally have the fucking white-picket fence all-American family they've always wanted."

"But you don't know that—you don't--"

"And you don't fucking _know_ me!" he screams. "No one does!"

"I'm—"

"What's even more sad is that I can't even bring myself to write a fucking note—because what else is there to say? Who'd want to read it anyway? It figures that I'd fuck even that up. So of course I end up using this letter I stole from some kid with a broken fucking arm--"

Evan heart completely stops.

"--that so conveniently mentions my fucking sister. And is just as pathetic and sad as any letter I'd write anyway--"

"You—you can't--"

"Can't what? Do anything right? Be a complete waste of air and space? Kill myself fast enough to make up for all the shit I've done?"

"Please don't do this--"

"You know what?" Connor Murphy laughs, hard and cold. "Fuck this. I don't even know why I bothered calling in the first place--"

"No, wait," Evan can't breathe, can't say anything right, "please, don't--"

The line goes silent. Evan drops the phone on the desk like he's been burned. Because everything is burning right now, and Evan can't breathe. "Jenna," he croaks, racing out the room and into the dark hallway. "_Jenna!_" He pounds on her locked office door, knowing that no one is inside, feeling his lungs starting to collapse in on themselves, reeling from the white spots darting across his vision. He needs to call 911. He needs to send help, because Connor Murphy is going to, is in the process of, has already taken a bottle of pills and is going to die. But he can't—he's not supposed to, because they're not allowed to send help without their consent, because Connor didn't tell him his address, because Connor might not actually be home, because Evan shouldn't even _know_ who he was talking to in the first place.

He thinks of Connor swallowing pill after pill after pill, of Connor sitting or falling on the floor and crying and vomiting, because Evan knows how this works—Evan knows that you only need 30 tablets of Ambien to overdose based on a case of a 68-year-old woman who died in 1996, and Evan knows that you need even less if you mix it with alcohol, or if you use Xanax, or Valium, or Lexapro. And Evan especially knows that you'll likely die from choking on your vomit, or some other form of respiratory failure, and that it hurts more than a successful gunshot to the head, than hanging, than jumping from a building or falling out of a tree. He knows that the complication rate is high with failure, that you'll have permanent organ damage if they don't save you in time, and he knows even more than anything that Connor Murphy does not deserve to die.

So Evan looks up Connor's address from the school directory, calls 911, and tells the operator the information they were trained to give in a gasping stutter. He hangs up, and sits there with the phone off the console until the overnight shift volunteer shows up. He walks back home, microwaves a slice of three-day-old pizza that he did not order, and does not eat it. He crawls into his bed, stares at the ceiling, and pretends to be asleep when his mom comes home and cracks open his door, pretends he doesn't hear her sigh because she doesn't have to hide her disappointment anymore.

He squeezes his eyes shut until he can no longer hear the rattle of pills or the cracking of bones. He tries to tell himself that this was a good day, and this was why. He tries to not think of anything at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so nervous about this, y'all, ahaha, please be gentle (but also, don't be gentle if you absolutely hated it—I'm a slut for feedback/constructive criticism!)
> 
> This must have been done before, but the idea of Evan Hansen as a peer support line volunteer (ironic, yes, but also...yes) just wouldn't leave me alone, and I'm dying for more DEH content, and I'm procrastinating on every other aspect of my life--so here we are!!!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, and hope to see you at the next one!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (a teeny bit of canon recap, and then we're off to the races, fam!)

Connor Murphy is not at school the next day. Zoe Murphy isn't either. She doesn't come back until the day after that, with dry, dead eyes, and Evan doesn't know if that's because Connor's dead or in the hospital. He tries not to think about how it's just five blocks to the psychiatric hospital from the call center, and twenty blocks to the cemetery.

Evan does not tell his mom what happened. Not that he could have, really, because he doesn't actually see her for the next three day due to work, and extra shifts, and night classes, and all the things she has to do because Evan makes staying alive so difficult for them both. And what would she say? That she was proud of him for violating protocol and just barely not killing someone?

Evan also does not tell anyone else what happened, either--because Dr. Sherman would tell his mom, and Alana would report him to his supervisor, and Jared--

"Yo, where do you think Jack the Ripper disappeared to?" Jared leans in conspiratorially, eyes bugged out behind the stupid, new glasses Evan now has to stare at multiple times throughout the school day because he wouldn't stop telling Evan and everybody else in the school conspiracy theories about how Connor Murphy was finally apprehended by the authorities. "I heard they preemptively threw him into juvie because they found a whole stash of semi-automatics in his closet. The only reason why they aren't sending him to Sing Sing when he's 18 is because he's white, rich, male, and clearly mentally unstable--"

"Stop it, Jared," Evan closes his locker with enough force to make him himself wince. Which was probably just the same amount of force that everyone else used to close their locker, but Evan hated the sound of slamming metal. Evan hated loud sounds in general. "That isn't funny."

"C'mon, Evan, it's a joke. The definition of a joke is 'funny,'" Jared rolls his eyes. "He probably just got sent to rehab again."

"And it's none of your business, so," Evan says as firmly as a 17-year-old loser with crippling anxiety and criminally high fear of confrontation can say, "so can you please stop telling everyone a bunch of lies?"

Jared holds his hands up like Evan just pulled one of those non-existent semi-automatics on him. "Woah, there, Mr. Operator. Looks like someone's weekly semi's been propping up their testosterone. Let me guess--did Murphy call and offer to suck you off for drug money?"

Evan turns around and walks to his next class, pretending he doesn't hear Jared announce to half the school that there's nothing wrong with the love one man has for another, Evan, especially if it's for meth! And he's almost proud of himself for walking away without feeling like he made a huge mistake, or minding that Jared's probably ignited a whole shitstorm of gay and or homophobia rumors, or like he has to text Jared fifteen iterations of 'I'm so sorry I didn't mean it' because the guilt is eating him alive. This only lasts for a brief, brief five minutes into a lecture on ecology, though, which just had to be one of Evan's favorite topics, because then the secretary's bored, tinny voice filters through the intercom with a screech, "Evan Hansen please report to the principal's office." Which she has to repeat two more times, just to really drive in the point, as Evan stumbles out of his seat and pretends not to hear the whispers and snickers collecting behind his sweaty back.

He's trying to figure out what he could have possibly fucked up to be called to the office (everything?), or who could have died (his mom? His entire family? Which was really just his mom?), or what crime he could have gotten framed for (homicide? Larceny? Perjury?), when he realizes the secretary (Nancy, he thinks? He tries his best not to be on a first-name basis with admin, not that they know he exists, even though his mom has had to pick him up and call him in sick or late for mental breakdowns at least once a month since his brain decided to be a dick) has been waving her hand in front of his face for an embarrassingly long time and he's bitten one of his nails a third of the way to the cuticle.

"I'm sorry?" 

She heaves a put-upon sigh. "Are you even there, kid? They're waiting for you."

"Oh. Oh, right--" Evan trips his way into the principal's office, apology at the tip of his tongue for whatever offense he's unwittingly committed. But when he sweeps his eyes across the room for police officers with handcuffs and/or a straight jacket, he just sees the principal looking deeply uncomfortable and two very sad parents. He assumed. "Uh," he says meaningfully.

"Evan," the principal says uncertainly, clearing his throat loudly, "thanks for coming. You're not in trouble."

"Oh, good," Evan says stupidly.

"There's--they asked to see you," the principal clears his throat again, like he isn't used to having sad parents in his office. Which Evan knows is not true, because his mom has definitely sat in his office at least five times trying to get accommodations for Evan that they never gave him. Or maybe he's just allergic to sadness. "So--"

"Could we please speak to him in private?" The sad dad politely ordered. He had sunken eyes, further hooded by the deep lines stretching across his forehead and between his brows. It made him look more stern than tired.

"Of course, Mr. Murphy," the principal stumbles out of the room and slams the door like he's relieved to be dismissed. Which just left Evan, staring blankly at the Murphy's', of which he only knows two at this entire school, and they're both related, but what are the chances that--

"Evan," says Mrs. Murphy gently, a horribly wet sheen to her eyes, "won't you please have a seat?"

And that was how Evan found himself walking to the psychiatric hospital later that day to visit his mostly alive, now best friend, Connor Murphy. Because Evan couldn't stand seeing the tears brimming along Mrs. Murphy's eyes ("Please, dear, call me Cynthia," she had pleaded, "any friend of Connor's is--" and she made this terrible strangled sound that Evan never wanted to hear ever again), couldn't stand how tightly Mr. Murphy had clasped him on the shoulder like he couldn't quite control his limbs.

When he arrives at the hospital, the nurse at the front desk somehow already knows that he's there to see Connor. He guessed it was because Cynthia told her to look out for the kid with 'CONNOR' emblazoned on his broken arm. He tried his best not to look into any of the wards, pretended not to hear the moans and mutters that leaked through open doors and thin curtains. He tried not to think about how close he had been to laying in one of those beds.

Cynthia hugged him tightly in the hallway when she saw him, a relieved smile crinkling her eyes. "I'm so happy you came, Evan," she said with the struggling cheer that defined his mom's own voice. "And I know Connor is so excited to see you."

Evan wasn't so sure about that.

Connor was picking at his nail polish when Evan came into his room, little flecks of black scattered across the sea of white engulfing him from all sides. Making him look smaller than Evan remembered. He wondered if it was the same nail polish he was wearing that night, or if he had somehow managed to smuggle a bottle into the hospital. Either seemed equally probable. Was it possible to kill yourself with nail polish?

"Did my mom make you come here?"

Connor was staring blankly at him. It reminded Evan of the expression he had in the brief seconds after Jared had called him a school shooter, the same expression he usually had right when someone insulted or mocked him--a moment of recalibration, like he's gathering the rage he's been collecting for every minute of every day of his entire life and reshaping it into something sharp and devastatingly uncontrolled. Or maybe it's just the meds. Evan remembers being unable to feel anything at all with his first set of meds.

"Why are you just standing there? Did my mom put you up to this?"

"No! No, yes, I mean--" Evan stammers, "she mentioned that you had visiting hours, and I thought I could, well, I wanted to…see you. See how you're doing."

"Why are you talking to my mom?"

"Oh. Because you--I don't know if you remember, but, before you, uh," swallowed a bottle of pills because you wanted to die and called the warmline because you didn't want to die alone, "I mean, earlier. In the week. In the computer lab, you--"

"I stole your creepy letter," Connor finishes for him, mercifully. Or maybe not mercifully. It's hard to tell.

"Yeah. That."

"I'm not sorry I took it. You have no right to be writing shit like that about--"

"No, I know," Evan cannot listen to him mention Zoe, or how sad and pathetic he is, he just can't, "but I didn't mean for you to see it. It was for--it was a therapy assignment."

Connor raises an eyebrow. His face is disconcertingly blank, like it's still trying to come back to life. "A therapy assignment?"

"Yeah. I know it's--it's supposed to be a pep talk. 'Today is going to be a good day and here's why.' I know it's kind of lame." What Evan meant to say was he knows that he himself is pretty lame, and Dr. Sherman has stupid-sounding ideas that don't ever work, but Evan tries to do them anyway because he doesn't want his mom to look like Connor's mom in the principal's office.

"That's really fucking sad."

"I know," Evan laughs, and it sounds forced and flat.

"They think we're actually friends, you know.

"I know," Evan says again, because he seems to know everything about this entire fucked up situation. "And I'm sorry. I just--I couldn't tell them that they were making the...the wrong assumption."

Connor is quiet for a long moment, staring at Evan like he's not even there. Evan thinks that he'd still be staring in the same direction, towards the wall, even if he left the room. "We aren't friends," he says this firmly, like it's a hard fact.

And it is. But Evan swallows around the bitterness stuck in his throat anyway and feels himself wince. "I know," he says again. "I'm sorry."

After a few more minutes of Evan awkwardly picking at his cast and Connor stoically picking at his nail polish, a nurse knocks at the door and Evan stupidly tells Connor to get well soon on his way out. Because he knows that the probability of Connor getting better is low, maybe as low as Evan's. Because that's just how it is for people like them. But he hopes Connor does, anyway, for his own sake.

Days pass, and it's not much different from any other year he's had in high school. Jared sometimes eats with him in the cafeteria, but he still spends most of his lunches in the library, picking apart a limp sandwich. Still makes sure he's the first one to arrive in class, so he can sit with his head down until the teacher starts lecturing. Still hides in the bathroom trying to convince himself that he isn't dying every so often--maybe not as often as before, but at least a few times a week. Connor comes back to school one day, and the whispers and stares trail after him like a stream--parting in front of him and crashing into a babbling, gleeful gossip-fest when his back is turned. But soon it's like nothing happened at all. Evan's not sure how he feels about that.

He tries not to think about it too much, because he and Connor are not friends. Connor pointedly does not look at him when they pass each other in the hallway, or when they have English together--or maybe he does, but Evan will never know because he desperately avoids all eye contact with Connor like he's a fucking gorgon. His parents haven't contacted him since the hospital visit, maybe because Connor told them they weren't friends.

Evan doesn't know why that makes him feel more sad than usual, even though his friends-to-loneliness ratio hasn't changed. Maybe it's just the experience of being rejected--no one likes being rejected.

He knows Lydia, who calls every Monday evening at nine PM on the dot, especially hates being rejected. Specifically by one person. "Why doesn't she love me, Evan?" she sobs. "What did I do wrong?"

"I'm sorry, Lydia," he sighs. "I'm sure you did nothing wrong."

"But if I didn't do anything wrong, why doesn't she talk to me anymore?" He winces as she sniffs loudly and wetly into the phone. "How could she do this to me? After all we've been through? I brought her to a motherfucking _Drake_ concert, for fucks sake! Do you know how much those tickets cost?"

"I'm sorry," he says again. "Sometimes it's just--it's just how it works out. It's not your fault," though in Evan's case, it's always his fault.

"You're not very good at relationships either, huh?" She says in one of those odd moments of reversal that make Evan deeply comfortable.

"No," he says softly, embarrassed even if she can't see him and they don't know each other and will never meet in real life. "I'm not."

"That makes two of us, then," she moans. "Evan, why won't she answer my texts?"

Frequent callers like Lydia make Evan think a lot about the cyclicity of human despair--how it starts one day and just never stops, how it plagues certain people and others seemingly none at all, how it becomes infectious if you're not careful enough. He supposed it should make him feel better about himself, that there are so many people out there suffering more than he ever has, but if doesn't.

Mei taps him on the shoulder. She jerks a thumb over her shoulder and does some hand motions that Evan interprets to mean that she's leaving him for the wolves again. He nods weakly and she smiles brilliantly, giving him an uninspiring thumbs up. He listens to her shoes clack down the hallway, just slightly louder than Lydia's tears, until the front door clicks shut.

Evan should request to have a shift change. But that would require talking to his supervisor, which won't happen because 1.) Evan is incapable of inconveniencing people and 2.) He hasn't seen her for the past several weeks. He wonders if she's planning to leave, or if she just hates Evan in particular. Either seemed probable.

The next few calls are routine. There's one person who says he's depressed and answers all of Evan's attempts at filling the silence with monosyllabic responses. "No," he doesn't have hobbies. "Yes," he's watching TV. "No," he doesn't have any favorite shows. "Yes," he has a pet. "No," it's not a dog. "No," it's not a cat. "No," it's not a goldfish. "No," it's not a bird. "No," it's not a lizard. "Yes," it's a tarantula. "Yes," it's very big.

This used to be one of Evan's worst nightmares, small talk that ended up being a game of 20 Questions. But Ricardo didn't seem angry or bored or impatient--just a little bit dead inside. Which Evan guessed was something he could manage.

After maybe five minutes of Evan trying to guess Ricardo's tarantula's name, Ricardo sighs and tells him her name is Rosebud, wishes him a good night, and hangs up. Evan types up his notes and thinks it went sort of well, all things considered.

Evan picks up the next call feeling a bit weary, but also strangely confident. Like maybe he's finally got the hang of muttering halfhearted affirmations and condolences to invisible strangers who don't care that they're talking to Evan so much as they're talking to someone. "Hi," he says, "you're reached the Peer Support Warmline."

There's a silence that Evan lets drag on for maybe ten seconds. It makes him nervous, but it's not something that hasn't happened before. He's half-expecting to hear sniffles or sobs any second now. "Hello? Are you there?"

"It's you again," Connor Murphy laughs mirthlessly, "What are the chances?"

Evan's mouth goes dry.

"You better not hang up on me."

"No, sorry, of course not--" Evan takes a shaky breath in, already feeling the back of his neck and the pits of his arms tingle with incoming perspiration. "What's, uh...what's up?"

"I thought these calls were anonymous."

"...They are?"

"Then how did you know where to send the cops?"

Evan, in his panic, launches into a detailed primer on the documentation system of the warmline that he apparently memorized by heart, which involves collecting the basic demographic information of first time callers, along with their county of residence, most importantly, for funding purposes, and this includes names, unless explicitly requested by the caller, phone numbers, and a high-level summary of all call contents, which is recorded for internal tracking and quality assurance—so maybe it's a little deceptive to say it's anonymous, but they are absolutely and completely confidential by, like, national and federal policy. So.

"O.K.," Connor says slowly, "but you sent them to my home address. And I was using a cell phone. How did you know where I live? How the fuck did you know I was even there?"

_Good guess?_, Evan does not say. In fact, Evan does not say anything at all, except for an incoherent freestyle of every filler word ever used since the invention of spoken language, "I, uh, well. Um. It's—uh. Well--"

"You know what, forget it. Clearly, you need more help than I do."

"Yeah," Evan almost keels over in relief. "Sorry. I do."

"You're fucking terrible at this. Why are you even working here if makes you sound like you're going to, like, blow chunks at any given moment?"

"I, well--" Evan thinks of lying and saying that he's still training. Which, given how terribly things are going with Connor, means that he probably needs more training, so he technically wouldn't be lying. But instead, for some reason that goes against every misinformed self-preservation instinct that makes up maybe 80% of his entire existence, he tells Connor, "my therapist made me do it."

"...Your therapist?"

"Yes. Because, well, as you can see, or hear, rather, sorry, I'm very bad at talking on the phone. So. He thought that this might help. Exposure therapy. Like, throw yourself into a frying pan and try not to get burned. You know?"

There's a long beat of silence before a high, keening trill erupts through the receiver, and it takes Evan a moment to realize that Connor is laughing. "That's one of the saddest fucking things I've ever heard."

"Yeah," Evan chuckled, trying not to think about how every interaction he has with Connor Murphy is like a bad case of déjà vu, "I know."

"Thanks to you," Connor snorts, "I've got a brand new shrink who's got me on meds that make me feel like a fucking zombie half the time."

"Oh. Sorry about that—I think it gets better, after a while. At least, that was what it was like for me. Not that we're on the same meds. Or have the same...issues."

"Of course you're on meds," Connor laughs again, and it sounds more self-deprecating than insulting. "The one person who talks to me like I'm not going to murder someone or slit my wrists in a bathtub is also a nutcase."

"Well," Evan says, valiantly ignoring as much of Connor's preceding statement as possible, "we nutcases have to stick together, right?"

"Right," Connor snickers.

They fall silent. There's a low, rhythmic tapping sound that's a bit hollow and dull, and Evan imagines Connor sitting at his desk, drumming his fingers on the wood. Maybe smiling, maybe not.

"I didn't call to thank you, by the way," Connor says suddenly.

"Oh," Evan furrows his brows. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, as you can tell," Connor says drily, "I'm still alive. Which wasn't the plan."

"Oh," Evan looks out into the dark hallway, where he knows Jenna is definitely not there. "I'm sorry--"

"Yeah, me too. And to be honest, I really fucking hate you for calling the cops on me."

"I'm sorry," Evan says again. "Or, I mean—I'm sorry you feel that way. But I'm—I'm not sorry I called the cops. You," he takes a breath, tries to remember all the canned phrases he's heard so many volunteers deploy so easily, "you deserve to be alive. No matter who tells you otherwise. Including yourself. And I'm glad that you still are." And he means it. Evan means it so much that he can feel his bones ache from the truth of it, his ulna throbbing for a phantom moment that he knows isn't real.

Evan holds his breath and listens to a stream of static filter through the receiver, a long, crackling sigh. "You remind me a lot of this one kid from my school," Connor says thoughtfully, causing Evan's sad, pathetic life to flash before his eyes, "What's your name?"

"Oh, it's, uh—it's Mark." Because of course he'd pick the one name he hates more than anything else, the one he planned on erasing from every legal document he owns, if he ever managed to convince himself that he would not faint before crossing the threshold of the DMV.

"Mark," Connor says it slowly, like he's weighing it on his tongue, pressing it against his teeth and swallowing it whole. "I'm Connor."

"Nice to, uh, meet you. Connor."

"Are you gonna put that in your system?"

"If you're O.K. with it." Evan pulls up his notes from their last call, which was just under his phone number. He stares at all the boxes he checked, and wonders how many people who get marked for "Suicidal Intent" end up getting another entry in their file.

"Hm," Connor taps his finger against his desk, like he's molding his thoughts into an answer. "Go ahead. You've got your fingers all over my personal shit already. So what's one more thing?"

"Sorry," Evan says as he slowly types out 'C-o-n-n-o-r,' typing in two n's too many, then too many o's. He backspaces and backspaces and it doesn't feel right to do this, for some reason. Like he's doing something cruel. It doesn't make any sense. "You can change your mind later. If you want."

"I'm still sticking to my original plan, by the way."

Evan stops typing. "What?"

"I don't know when. Or how. The details are murky, at this point," Connor laughs, and this time it sounds tired and small. "But I don't think I'll make it to the end of the school year."

"Connor--"

"I'd say I'd keep you posted, but look what happened last time." Connor laughs again. "Talk to you later, Mark."

"Connor, wait--"

Evan listens to the silence on the other end of the line until his computer screen goes black. He looks at his reflection staring back at him, eyes wide open and afraid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The plot thickens! lol. You probs see where this is going.
> 
> I'm sure this is going to end up fairly predictable, for all you veteran fic/trope consumers out there. But I'll make it as fun as possible--the possibilities are eNdLesS!
> 
> Let me know what you think--and thank you so much for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well this one's a bit of a doozy, lol--what are chapter breaks?
> 
> (but we've finally made it out of the canon woods, wowza!)

Connor Murphy is at school the next day, much to Evan's relief.

He knows he's not being very subtle about it, how he stares after Connor at every opportunity he has. He doesn't know what he's trying to accomplish, other than cementing Jared's theory that he's been having an illicit affair with Connor and getting him to cook meth or cocaine or some other Schedule I drug for him while they make out in his basement because the plaster of his cast tends to melt over the heat of their stove and their burning love for each other. And of all the wrong things that Evan could deny in that theory, he snaps that he doesn't have a basement, Jared, you know this, which only fuels Jared's delight even further, because that means you do it in your _room_, Evan, with Heidi _just next door_, and like, wow, how risqué. And by then Connor has disappeared around the corner and Evan prays to whatever higher power might be out there that Connor has become hard of hearing from the heavy metal that blasts out from his earbuds between and sometimes during class now.

But Evan can't stop thinking about how it could be any moment now--that this could be the day that Connor decides to try it again. He's looking for signs, but he's only ever been trained to find the most obvious ones--i.e., the ones where he explicitly tells him that he wants to die. If Connor's slouching more than usual, does that mean he's having a particularly bad day? Or what if he keeps his head in his arms the entirety of third period--does that mean he's tired of the world and plans on doing it that night? For all that Evan knew about suicide, he realized he actually really didn't know much about it after all. Maybe because he was trying to do the exact opposite of his area of expertise.

At any rate, here he was, trailing after Connor with his crinkled brown paper lunch bag in hand, hoping he looks inconspicuous and wishing more than anything that he was sitting in the library picking at the crusts of his bland sandwich. Connor walks down the hallway in his now usual plodding pace, like it takes an enormous amount of effort to lift his heavy-duty boots more than a few centimeters off the ground. He's planning what he'd say to Connor if he gets apprehended--like maybe he could try 'Oh, I didn't even realize I was following you, I was so lost in thought--but, by the way, have you thought about harming yourself lately?,' or 'Oh, I was just trying to find a private place to eat lunch because I can't stand human interaction, you know? But hey, would you tell me if you planned on hurting yourself in the next six odd months or so?,' or maybe 'Oh, I was thinking about how life can be so sad sometimes, like my lunch, for instance--a thin slice of Kraft cheese between two slices of fake wheat Wonder Bread. It almost makes me want to, like, throw it away sometimes. Have you felt like that, recently?'

He's so focused on figuring out a non-morbid way of violating Connor's privacy, that he doesn't even realize he's followed him out into the school parking lot until he's squinting into the midday sun. Connor is staring at him a few paces away, arms crossed and lips curled back from his teeth. He'd forgotten that Connor was really good at looking threatening.

"Why are you following me?"

"Oh. I—I'm not?"

Connor raises an eyebrow. "Really, now? So you've just been pretending to be my fucking shadow for the past week or so?"

"Or, well," this is exactly what Evan did _not _want to happen, "I didn’t mean to _follow _you, per se--"

"How do you not intentionally follow someone? Did you just become a stalker by accident?" Connor's already intimidating expression takes a sudden turn for the frightening, like he's switched on an internal dial that somehow makes him grow several inches taller and sharper and meaner, and Evan can already feel his body preparing itself to be plowed into the cement. "Is this a fucking joke? Who put you up to this? Kleinman? If you think you can just fuck around with me and expect to--"

Evan doesn't want to know what Connor thinks he's expecting. So of course he blurts out the last thing he wants to do at this very moment, "I just wanted to ask if I could eat lunch with you!"

Connor pauses in his transformation into the Gothic Hulk. "What?"

"I just," Evan gulps and feels his eyes squeeze shut and his mouth twitch to the side, unbidden, like his body is doing everything it can to make him shut up while he still can, but he doesn't ever do anything right, so, "I've been meaning to ask you. But I just—I'm just very bad at talking to people. So I've been putting it off."

His eyes narrow. "Why do you want to eat lunch with me?"

"I, well—I don't have any friends," he winces.

"So?"

"Well--" Maybe Connor won't punch him in the face if he's sufficiently pitiful. Which should be easy, because Evan is naturally pitiful. "I was just wondering, since—I know it's not the same as, like, an invitation to hang out, because I'm a total loser and no one wants to hang out with a total loser, right?--but you were the only person who signed my cast and. And I really appreciated it, even if we had a really bad misunderstanding right after that—which I'm still really sorry about, by the way—because you didn't have to do that, sign my cast, even if you were just being nice. So, I just thought, maybe you might be O.K. with eating lunch with me, because I usually eat lunch in the library by myself, which I know is really sad, but I just don't have anyone to sit with in the cafeteria, because even Jared—really sorry about him, by the way—gets tired of me, because we're not really friends. But I totally get if you don't want to, because I can be annoying and weird and probably smell really bad because I sweat a lot when I'm nervous, and I'm nervous all the time, as you can tell—so, like, no pressure at all if you don't want to, because, I mean, _I _wouldn't even want to eat lunch with me, and I'm sorry if it seemed like I was following you around, because I wasn't trying to, even though it looked like I totally was, because I just wanted to see if--"

Connor abruptly turns on his heel and walks away. Evan watches him recede into the distance, and he's not sure if he feels relieved or sad that he'd successfully driven him away just by being himself. But then there's the beep of a car door unlocking, and Connor is turning around and directing an impatient glare at him. "Why the fuck are you just standing there?" he calls out.

"Sorry?" Evan squeaks.

"Do you want to eat lunch or not?" Connor drums his fingers on the top of his car for a long beat before rolling his eyes. He opens the door and disappears inside, long limbs trailing after him. "Hurry the fuck up before I change my mind!"

Evan hurries up.

They've driven maybe five minutes down a road Evan didn't catch the name of because he was trying so hard not to hyperventilate, before Evan manages to gather enough air in his lungs to ask Connor where they were going. The ash tray is full and the entire car smells like it's been infused with weed. Evan vaguely wonders if he can get a secondhand high from snuffed out bongs. Or blunts. Or joints. Or spliffs. He clearly doesn't do drugs.

Connor shoots him an annoyed look that has Evan crinkling the stupid brown paper bag he's for some reason still holding in his hands. "You said you wanted to eat lunch right?"

"Yes?"

"So we're going to eat lunch."

"Oh. Like, off-campus?"

Connor turns his head completely this time to glare at him, and Evan decides that he'll stare exclusively through the windshield for the duration of this ride to his possible death. "No, I'm just driving in a circle so we can freshen ourselves up to go back and eat in the fucking cafeteria. Does that sound about right?"

"Sorry," Evan mutters as he tries to shrink and/or become one with Connor's leather seats. "I'll stop talking."

"I didn't tell you to _shut up_, I just--" Connor sighs, raking his hand through his hair roughly enough that it had to hurt. He leans his elbow against his door and props his head up against his hand. His neck is long and pale, like it's just barely wrapping around his spine. "Is there anywhere you want to go in particular?"

"Oh, anywhere is fine. I, uh," Evan meekly raises his sad, crinkled lunch bag, "I brought my lunch. And I didn't bring any money. So, wherever you prefer--"

Connor lets out the most exasperated sigh Evan's ever heard in his life, which is saying something, before he grabs Evan's lunch and tosses it out the window.

"Connor!" Evan gasps. "What--"

"I'm not going to let you just awkwardly sit there eating out of a brown fucking paper bag," Connor scoffs. "Then what's the point of going off-campus?"

"But that's littering! You can get fined for, like, $100! And get thrown in jail!" Evan looks behind his shoulder in panic, because he swears he can hear sirens approaching them, and he absolutely _does not_ want to go to jail.

"Does it look like I care?"

"And my sandwich was in a ziplock bag and that's not compostable, and—oh no, I think I packed a bag of chips, too--"

"Can you just _chill _for one second?" Connor snaps. "No wonder why you don't have any fucking friends!"

Evan's mouth clamps shut so hard that his teeth clack together. He swallows and wills himself to be still, for his hands to stop shaking and his organs to stop quivering. "Sorry," he chokes out. "Sorry. I'm just...overreacting."

"You think?" Connor mutters. And Evan does not say that it's not fair of him to judge, when he thinks the entire world is out to get him. That maybe this is the reason why he doesn't have any friends either.

They don't say anything more until they pull up at a rickety building that looks like it barely survived the Civil War. There's one of those café chalk signs next to the door that usually have some kind of pun or light-hearted political message written in all-caps and curlicues. Like 'Veni, Vidi, Kimchee,' or 'It's a doggone day for hot dogs and kicking out our poorly elected officials!'. Evan's definitely seen a few of those on Zoe's Instagram. This one just says '24 HOUR PAHNKAKES,' with the 'KAKES' squashed against the side of the board. Evan can't tell if they're being ironic or not.

"Do pancakes sound good to you?" Connor says quietly, a frown tugging at the corners of his mouth like Evan has already said no. As if Evan was capable of ever saying no. "I didn't have breakfast. So."

Evan nods agreeably, then tells Connor's quickly empty seat that "Pancakes sound great" as he scrambles to unbuckle his seat belt without breaking his arm again.

There's only an elderly couple and a burly, extremely broad-shouldered man slowly making their way through a tall stack of pancakes, and Evan definitely doesn't think he's imagining their narrow-eyed stares boring into the back of his head as Connor leads them to a corner booth. They probably think they're cutting class. Which, at this point, they probably are, but Evan doesn't want to check the time so he can confirm his worst fears. He thinks Dr. Sherman would call that progress. Or maybe it's just denial.

Connor chews on his thumbnail as he studies the menu, and for some reason, it seems weirdly out of character. Evan never thought of him as someone who bites their nails. But then again, what does he know about Connor Murphy, anyway?

"What are you getting?" Connor asks absently.

"Oh, I didn't bring any money. I think I might have mentioned that. So--"

Connor rolls his eyes so hard that Evan can see the veins crisscrossing the whites. "I have money. I'll pay."

"Oh, no, you don't have to--"

"Of course I don't _have_ to," Connor growls. "And I don't really _want _to either. But I threw your lunch out the window and I'm trying to not be a total dick, so could you please just order something?"

"I'll have whatever you're having," Evan says weakly, pushing his menu to the side in a way that he hopes seemed decisive. Based on how Connor sighs like someone was pressing all the air out of his chest, it probably wasn't very decisive.

A waiter with red-rimmed eyes and a suspiciously content smile sidles up to their table. His name tag says 'NICK,' with a smiley face sticker tucked around the corner. "What'll it be for today, dear friends?"

Connor scowls up at him. "We'll have two plain pancakes. Extra gluten in mine, if that's a thing."

"Coming right up," Nick lilts. He moves his pen in several sweeping loops and wrist flicks across his notepad that makes Evan think that he's actually drawing out their order. "Will that be all?"

Connor raises an eyebrow at Evan. Evan shakes his head vigorously, and gets another eye roll. "If you could put all the toppings you have in, like, a tray or something. And a small pot of coffee. That'd be great."

"Why, absolutely! We can most definitely do that, my good man."

"And if you could also get me whatever it is that's making you so happy to serve demanding jerks like me all day, you'll find a $20 tip on the table."

Nick closes his notepad and grins a little less. "Make it fifty and I'll see if we have some extra sugar in the back."

"I don't do powdered sugar on my pancakes. You have any Auntie MJ?"

"But of course!" Nick nods serenely. "Customer favorite. Coming right _under_," he gives them a wink that lasts for maybe five seconds too long before he takes their menus and strolls back into the kitchen.

Evan takes a sip of his water and tries to remember how to swallow. "Is, uh—is Auntie MJ a special brand of maple syrup?"

Connor drums his fingers on the table and seems to smile or smirk or, like, express some form of positive emotion for a brief, tantalizing moment before his mouth slips back into a flat line. "It's weed."

"Oh." _Oh. _"Wait, is this place--"

"It's a real diner. Or café, or whatever. They just have...extra menu options."

"Ah," Evan nods like this is all very normal teenage stuff that he totally understands and isn't completely petrified of being arrested for being in possession because he unwittingly agreed to be truant on the scene of the crime, which will definitely not look good when he has to testify in court and his mom is crying because now she has to further bankrupt herself to pay for his bail and he won't be able to convince her to just let him rot in jail forever because his mom's too nice and he doesn't know how to be assertive and Evan really should have just stuck with eating his limp sandwich in the library. "How did you, uh, hear about this place?"

"My weed dealer."

"Oh, huh. Yeah, that—that makes sense. Very, uh. Very smart...business practices."

This time, Connor actually does laugh. It's shocking to see—how his shoulders and chest shake from the force of it, like it can hardly contain his mirth. "You're so fucking weird, Hansen."

And it's definitely not a compliment, but it's the nicest thing Connor has said to him yet, so. Evan will take it. "Yeah," he says with a tentative smile. "I know."

Nick, as promised, brings out two large plates of stacked pancakes, an industrial-sized baking tray of literally every possible topping that could be slathered on a pancake (including, for some reason, hot sauce and mustard), and a small baggie of a sickly-looking yellow-green that Connor pockets quickly under the table. Nick and Connor exchange subtle chin dips, and Evan honestly can't believe he's just witnessed a drug exchange. Drug deal. Drug transaction. Whatever it's called, it's maybe the most intriguing thing that's happened in his entire life so far.

There's four cans of whipped cream, which Evan thought was a bit excessive, until Connor takes one of them and sprays a three-inch high swirl on the morsel of pancake he'd speared with his fork and shoves it all in his mouth.

Evan must be very rudely staring, because Connor glares at him as he swallows and wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. Evan can see his throat working it down, and thinks unbidden of the pills he swallowed a few weeks ago--wonders whether he took them one by one or all at once. Connor aims the tongs of his fork at him. "You better not be planning on sitting there and watching me eat. Especially when I ordered all this shit for you."

"Sorry," Evan lets his face pinch itself tightly shut just once, as if doing that would block out the reason why he was sitting here in the first place. He can't even begin to think of how he's going to dissuade him from doing anything at all. What if this was his last act of charity before he decides to try again? He tentatively scoops a handful of blueberries onto his pancakes. When he manages to get his hands to stop shaking enough to not spill everything down the front of his shirt, he realizes that Connor is watching him. "Is there, um. Is there something on my face?"

Connor openly stares for a few beats more before he shakes his head. "Nothing." He sprays another mountain of whipped cream onto his fork and stacks three banana slices and some M&M's on top.

"O.K." The pancakes actually aren't that bad.

Then, after maybe three minutes of silently eating, Connor puts his fork down on his plate with a clatter and sighs loudly. "Just--O.K., out of all the toppings literally at your fucking fingertips, you pick blueberries? Could you be more boring?"

Evan winces and does not say he's a fundamentally boring person, in general. "Sorry," he says weakly, "I just, um--I just like blueberries?"

This has to be maybe the tenth time in fifteen minutes that he's seen the back of Connor's eyes. "Sure. But you could also add chocolate chips. Or Twizzlers. Or like, fucking candied pecans, I don't know."

"Twizzlers and blueberries?" Evan wrinkles his nose.

"O.K., fine, _bacon _and blueberries--"

"But that's not kosher. And also doesn't sound very good--"

Connor throws his hands up in the air. "My point is, all of this is gonna go to waste if you don't eat it, because I'm sure as fuck not taking it to-go. So could you stop being so fucking polite and just eat what you want?"

The thing is, Evan was actually perfectly fine with having just blueberries on his plain pancakes. Mostly because he really did like blueberries. And partly because Nick dumped three froyo shops' worth of toppings on their table, which is just a little bit overwhelming, and also because what if Evan accidentally picks a topping that Connor really likes and that makes Connor quietly resent him for the rest of their already awkward and strange lunch outing together, and this just so happens to be the tipping point that makes Connor decide that today will be his last day on earth? "Sorry," Evan mumbles cogently.

"How about this," Connor leans forward with a determined squint, "I dare you to add some Twizzlers, Oreos, and...coconut flakes on one decently-sized slice."

"Only if you put soy sauce on yours."

Connor gives him a considering look, like he's deciding whether or not Evan's worth his mettle. But he settles back with a nod, smirking as he grabs the bottle of soy sauce and completely soaks his next slice a very fermented dark brown. "Deal."

So that was how Evan found himself choking down a frankly disgusting-looking mash of Nutella, mustard, and cinnamon, several overly adventurous and largely regretful bites later, because Connor apparently had a theory that Nutella makes everything taste better. He proved it by claiming that it tasted passably well with Swedish Fish, pretty good with mayonnaise, and "fucking _orgiastic_" with bacon bits. He supposed it was worth it, though, when Connor wrapped a Nutella-smeared pancake around a heinous amount of Sour Patch Kids, raisins, and ketchup, and pretended not to gag behind his mug of bitter, probably-not-very-effective palate-cleanser coffee. He flips Evan off when he starts laughing, and for some reason, it feels like an accomplishment. A few more customers trickle in, and they are most definitely staring at them, but Evan actually doesn't really care—or, rather, he just cares what he supposed was the normal amount of caring that weird teenagers eating weird food combinations in a weird pancake place in the middle of an extremely weird school day would have--because he's too preoccupied with fending off Connor's attempts at adding a generous dollop of whipped cream to Evan's every slice. They agree to call a truce when Connor decided to do a blind taste test of all the vaguely red condiments they had, and of course managed to pick the hot sauce on his first try.

Connor's eyes are still watering when they make their way out. Nick tells them to come back soon, beloved comrades, laughing so slowly that it just makes him sound short of breath.

"I told you it was a bad idea," Evan snickers. This might actually be the first time he's laughed in a way that could be called a 'snicker.'

"Shut up," Connor hisses around his swollen tongue. He turns the car engine on and blinks rapidly at the windshield, mouth hanging open like he's airing it out."If you had just gone topping-crazy on your own in the first place, like any other sane person, I'd still be able to feel my tongue right now."

"Don't blame me for your poor life choices!" To be fair, Evan felt like he was going to throw up. He's pretty sure Connor would get a good laugh out of that. But it's an almost pleasant feeling, though, like it would make today even more memorable if he did.

"I regret a lot of things about my life," Connor groan, "but I just might regret that one the most, like, _fuck--_"

And then a sudden wave of vertigo crashes into Evan, because he remembers, now--the whole reason why he's sitting in this car that smells like a smoking blunt, cutting class and maybe not even making a difference at all. Evan gulps and allows himself to squeeze his eyes shut tightly just once, trying not to think of how tonight could be the final night, of how any one of the long days and nights ahead that could be the last one Connor will ever have. He might actually throw up. "What time is it?"

Connor squints at him with a sharp annoyance that's heavily tempered by his panting. "I'm fucking dying over here, and you want to know what time it is?"

"Sorry, I just--we've been here for a while, and, well, I think lunch has probably ended--"

"Hansen," Connor snorts, "lunch definitely ended a long time ago."

"Oh," Evan breathes in through his nose and tries to focus in the trail of ash on Connor's dashboard. Connor said he didn't do 'powdered sugar,' whatever that is, but it wouldn't not be on brand if he snorted at least one illicit substance in this car at some point. Evan feels a little more nauseous than he did before.

Connor sighs heavily and starts backing the car out. "You'll catch the start of sixth period if I speed."

"You don't have to--I mean, well, you shouldn't speed, because it's dangerous and--"

"Too late," Connor says as the speedometer jumps to 80 mph and Evan stomach lurches in a way it really shouldn't.

There's a couple of close calls as Connor blows through at least three red lights, leaving an old woman with a walker shaking her fist angrily at them as Evan tries to convince himself that he is only imagining the red and blue flashing lights in the rearview mirror. He tries to preoccupy himself with gripping his seat belt hard enough that he can feel his nails digging into his palms through the fabric, like that might protect him from inevitable life-threatening injury. He vaguely notes that Connor isn't wearing his, which is extremely concerning in many ways, but also extremely on-brand for him.

But they do miraculously manage to screech into the student parking lot in one piece, with ten whole minutes to spare before sixth period. Connor tells Evan this with no small amount of smug pride as Evan shakily opens the car door and empties maybe three-fourths of the contents of his stomach to the ground.

"Shit, Hansen," Connor laughs, remarkably not grossed out, "not one for cheap thrills, are you?"

"You mean the Sia song?" Evan says as he eventually stops spitting and tilts back upright. His mouth tastes like high-sucrose stomach acid. Not the worst puke he's ever tasted.

"Nevermind," Connor snorts, running a hand carelessly through his hair with a secure tug. It flops back into his eyes anyway. "You good?"

"Yeah, I'm--sorry, just give me a moment." Evan's heart, currently still going berserk in his chest, will never forgive him for this. There's a long moment where all he can hear is the blood rushing through his ears over the soft clack of the cooling engine. He wonders if Connor can hear it, too. "What's your sixth period? Maybe we can, uh, walk together?"

"Econ," Connor says nonchalantly. He's leaned back in his seat and started picking at his nail polish again. "I'm not going though."

"You're not?" Evan hated how surprised he sounds. Apparently, Connor did too, based on the scowl that spreads over his face.

"I was going to cut whether or not we went on a pancake run," he says defensively. "Econ fucking sucks, anyway. I'm not going to sit there and pretend to listen about supply and demand and shit while fucking Mr. Douché gripes about me looking bored when almost everyone else is also clearly bored out of their mind."

"Oh, no, yeah," Evan took Econ last year, and he remembers Mr. Doucher found a particular delight in calling on Evan and watching him hyperventilate. "He definitely hated me, too."

Connor eyes him skeptically. "Sure he did."

Evan does not want to argue about how much their Econ teacher mutually dislikes them. "Thanks for, um. Thanks for eating lunch with me. And for lunch. That was--I had a lot of fun. I really appreciate it."

Connor is quiet for a long moment, looking at Evan intently, and for maybe the first time, Evan has no idea what he's thinking about. He tries his best not to look away, but Connor drops his eyes first. "No problem. Thanks for coming with."

Evan grabs his backpack and gets out of the car, carefully maneuvering himself around his steaming pile of half-digested pancake with a wince. He feels sorry for whoever parks here next. Or the janitor who may or may not clean it up. He thinks they have a grudge against him, which is understandable, since he pukes on the schoolgrounds on a fairly regular basis. "I guess I'll, um--I'll see you around?"

Connor is still staring at his steering wheel. Evan can see his throat bob up and down, like he swallowed something painful. "Yeah. I'll see you."

As Evan's walking away, he wished he specified that he'd be seeing him 'tomorrow' or 'soon' or something way more specific than 'around', because 'around' could mean tomorrow at school, or in a few days if he decides to cut, or in the hospital again, or, even worse--so far worse that Evan has to bite the inside of his cheek hard until it stings to stop himself from spiraling--at his funeral. Just before he enters the school, he turns back to see if Connor's still there, because he's still half-convinced that none of the past three hours, the past few days, the past few weeks have been real. But Connor's still sitting in his car, engine rumbling. He can't see the expression on his face. Evan raises his non-casted arm in a tentative wave--because it'd be strange to flash Connor's name back at him, even if he might not be able to see it from that far away--and Connor waves back.

And, well. It's nice.

It's nice enough that Evan just manages to get his foot in the door of his sixth period before the bell, and just manages to squeeze into his seat without tripping or feeling like everyone's eyes are trying to burn him whole. It's nice enough that he jumps just slightly less when the phone rings mid-lecture, and manages to convince himself that they're not calling because they knew he cut class and were coming to drag him out in handcuffs, because he witnessed something objectively far more criminal than missing a few periods just a few hours ago. (Unless they also knew about their trip to the 24 Hour Pahnkake place, but the school admin doesn't move that quickly, right?). It's nice enough that he worries just slightly less about not knowing what the homework is for those two classes and and falling desperately behind because he doesn't know anyone well enough to ask them what the homework is, and of the one person he does know, Jared, he definitely can't ask because then he'll want to know where he was and what he was doing for like three hours and Evan can't tell him about Connor so he'll tell him that he wasn't feeling well and then he'd make some kind of a joke about Evan being twitchy or jerking off or getting high and Evan really doesn't want to deal with that. Which is exactly what happened, because Jared cornered him after school asking him where he was, and Evan would normally feel touched that he noticed he wasn't there, but not when he's got this shit-eating smirk on his face and was mostly just pissed that Evan ditched him on the day that they had a group quiz in Spanish. It's one one the few times where Jared begrudgingly associates with him in public for something other than comic relief, if only because he knows how to conjugate his verbs.

"So you're telling me you camped out in the nurse's office having an hour long gay panic attack because you had Connor Murphy's dick in your hands--"

"I didn't tell you that," Evan mutters as he tries to figure out a way to get out of the school without making eye contact with his Spanish teacher, whose door is propped wide open and who probably hates Evan only a little bit less than his Econ teacher. "I told you I wasn't feeling well."

"And I extrapolated from how twitchy you are that you liked it way more than you admit--"

"Can you please just drop it with the Connor rumors?"

"Ah, so you're the dominant one in the relationship, aren't you," Jared snickers. "Surprise, surprise."

"We're not--" Evan sighs "Just--whatever, Jared. You can believe what you want."

Jared cackles and Evan winces, and nothing about this is really different from their usual Family Friend dynamic. But then Jared stops laughing and suddenly looks so forcefully casual that it mostly makes him look clearly uncomfortable.

"Hey," he says, nonchalantly, "I finally got Fortnite for my XBox. You want to come over? My mom is starting to think we aren't 'real friends' and is threatening to take me off the insurance policy."

"Oh--" Evan must have looked extremely surprised, which he was, because Jared scowls and slouches even more casually.

"Don't think this is anything more than it actually is. You owe me after ditching me on the day we have a Spanish quiz," he says sullenly.

Evan wants to tell him that's not how getting favors from the people holding up your grade works. But he just sighs instead. "I can't. I have a shift at the call center--"

"Oh yeah," Jared leans back upwards, smirk already in place. "Your sex operator side-hustle."

"_Jared_\--" Evan can feel a throbbing start to form behind his eyes. He's hoping it's a Jared- and/or sugar-induced headache, and not an incoming stroke. "Look, I got to go. Maybe we can hang out next time?"

"One time only deal," Jared sniffs. If Evan didn't know him well, he would think that he was trying to not look disappointed. "I'm a busy guy with better things to do than watch you have a seizure from the special effects and press all the wrong buttons."

"Sorry," Evan mutters, adjusting his backpack on his shoulders because he doesn't know what to do with his body, which is starting to vibrate from the inside out because even it knows that they really need to go home right now.

Jared sighs and looks at his watch, like Evan was the one who was holding him up in the first place. "Do you need a ride? I have to pick up eggs and whatever anyway."

"Oh, no, it's alright," Evan doesn't think he can bear any more of Jared's insights about his sex life. "I can just walk."

Jared blinks at him, arms folded across his chest. He looks like he wants to say something that might actually be serious for once, and Evan knows he doesn't want to hear it.

"Well, I'll--I'll see you tomorrow, then. Bye, Jared," Evan says to Jared's feet as he turns around and powerwalks past Señora Gonzales' classroom and out the doors into the sunlight streaming directly into his eyes. He tries not to think about how this is the second time he's walked away from Jared since kindergarten and if it's suspicious that it's only happening just now.

And he manages to make it home only slightly panicking, which is definitely some kind of progress he supposed, with thirty minutes to spare before he needs to start powerwalking to the call center. He spends ten of those thirty minutes panicking at his normal levels talking to his mom on the phone because apparently the school did notice that he disappeared for two periods.

"Evan, where were you?" She sounds more worried and sad than accusatory. "Are you O.K.?"

"I'm fine," he mumbles, "Sorry, I just--I wasn't feeling well. I didn't go to the nurse's office this time because--well, because I didn't want them to call you. Because it wasn't a big deal."

"It's a big deal if you had to miss two periods because of it," she sighs. "Evan, we've been through this before. You need to tell me when things aren't going well so I can help you."

Evan wants to bite back and ask but where were you all those other times when I was having panic attacks almost every day at school? Where were you when there wasn't any food left in the house and I couldn't order out because talking to someone would be worse than starving? Where were you when I broke my arm? How long would it take for you to notice if I was gone? And would you do anyway? "I'm sorry," Evan says, and he means it, because it's not her fault that he makes living so hard. "I'll call you next time."

"It's O.K.," she says softly. He can imagine her standing in her scrubs, frowning at the hospital floor with one eye on the clock. A little hump forming under her shoulders because of the weight she has to carry every day because of him. Of the lies he tells her and the ones she makes up for his sake. "Are you good on meds? Should I make an extra appointment with Dr. Sherman?"

"No, I'm good. I just--I think I just need more sleep."

"O.K., honey." There's a short lull where Evan can hear the clatter of wheels and metal equipment rushing past, a clipped voice calling Code Blue Code Blue Code Blue. "Hey, how about I play hooky next Monday? I feel like I haven't seen you for so long. We can have a...a Marinara Monday. Like a Taco Tuesday, but Italian."

There's so much fragile uncertainty in her voice, that he makes himself laugh for her sake. "I have shifts at the call center Monday nights, though."

"Oh, shoot, that's right," she clucks. "How is that going, by the way?"

"It's--good. It's still going good."

"You've made so much progress, Evan," she says in that voice she always uses when she says things like this. "I'm so proud of you."

"Thanks," Evan says, and it's like the more she says it the less he believes her. There's a weird hollowness in his chest, like if he knocked on his ribs he'd hear it echo from one end to the other. "Are you free on another day?"

"Absolutely. It'll be this week. I'll need check the syllabus, but I promise that--oh, what? Right now? Are you--" There's a rustle and a knock, like she's clutching her phone against her hair or her shirt. Evan makes out a low string of curses and a siren in the distance as she fades back in. "You've got to be kidding me--Evan, I'm so sorry honey, I've got to go now. We have an emergency admit, and it's all hands on deck--"

"No worries--"

"Talk to you soon, alright? Love you!"

Evan only flinches a little bit when the phone beeps, mostly because he expected it. It reminds him of the slam of a gate, or someone shutting the door in his face--it's slightly easier when you know it's going to happen.

He spends his remaining time at home staring blankly at his math homework before deciding to walk to the call center a little early. He used to resent having to walk to places he had to go to (of which there were really only three--four, if you counted the grocery store, but that was thankfully rare), but it was definitely better than riding the bus, or, especially now, getting driven by Jared. And it was maybe the one time where being alone sometimes didn't feel so lonely. The sun had just slipped underneath the horizon, but it still cast an orange halo on everything and sent pink streaks through the sky like a gathering blush.

The calls today put Evan a bit on edge. Not that any of them were really very different from the usual calls, because Pierre's still convinced that he's going to die alone and Joni still hates her entire family with a passion. But Evan can't stop looking at the clock, wondering if this might be the call where Connor Murphy tells him he's going to die. Except for the fact that he explicitly told him he wasn't going to tell him he was going to die. Regardless, Evan was being very leery about giving out his name, because even though Connor has a pretty distinct voice that's weirdly high and kind of nasally, Evan can't help but hear echoes of it in every call, and what if Connor had a cold or decided to pitch his voice differently because he totally knew than Evan was a Big Fat Nosy Liar?

"What's your name, again?" Asks Cody, who sounds kind of sort of like Connor if he just had his wisdom teeth taken out.

"Oh, it's, um, it's--" Evan mumbles unintelligibly.

"Evelyn?" Cody sounded confused. "Did you say your name was Evelyn?"

"Um--"

"It's totally fine if it is--I just thought you were a guy. Oh, shit, unless--I'm so sorry, did I misgender you?"

"Oh, no, you--"

"Man, I'm so sorry," Cody groaned. "I thought I would never do something like that. God, I'm so terrible--"

"No, it's fine--"

"Evelyn, I'm so sorry. You're one hundred percent woman in my eyes. And ears, too, for the matter--she/her/hers, all that. When did you start transitioning, if you don't mind me asking?"

"...Just this year," Evan says weakly, and this is exactly how he's turning into a pathological liar.

They talk a little bit more about Evelyn's recent foray into estrogen and the politics of passing, of which Cody seemed to know a lot about. Turns out he had a lot of trans and non-binary friends back in college.

"It's so brave of you to live your truth, Evelyn," Cody says with painful sincerity. He's also been ending every sentence with 'Evelyn,' like he's trying to reaffirm Evan's womanhood. Which he guessed was kind of sweet of him to try so hard. "I'm so glad we got to talk, Evelyn. I wish you the very best in your journey, Evelyn. You're awesome, Evelyn."

"Thank you," Evan says with a cringe. "I appreciate your, um...your support."

"Have a good night, Evelyn."

"You too."

Evan stares at his blank notes and sighs. What would he even write? That he got misgendered as a trans woman early in her transition with a very supportive family and loads of great friends? That Cody will likely be calling back asking about whether Evelyn's finally proposed to her girlfriend or moved to San Francisco, because that was the first place Evan could think of where Evelyn could quietly and happily fade away from existence?

Evan picks up the next call a little absentmindedly, because he's starting to feel guilty about leading Cody on, just like he led Connor's mom along, and his own mom along, because all Evan's really good at doing is letting good people believe what they want about him and making things up until it becomes one big fat lie that will eventually blow up in his face.

"Hello, you've reached the Peer Support Warmline."

"Hello, Mark," Connor says wryly. "Seems like I've got your schedule down."

"Connor," Evan sits up so quickly that he nearly tips his shitty, half-broken chair over. "Hi. Hello. Um, how are--how are you?"

There's a long pause where Evan can feel his spine stiffening in anticipatory despair. But then Connor finally says with a foreign-sounding thoughtfulness, "Not bad. Actually."

"Oh," Evan's lungs collapse in on themselves in relief. He hunches over his keyboard, trying his best to breathe through his nose.

"Are you surprised?"

"No! Or, well, yes. I mean," Evan takes a deep breath. "Sorry. I am surprised. But that's--that's awesome."

"I was surprised too. It's honestly been a while since I've felt anything other than shitty and worthless."

"That's--well, I'm glad. That you finally had a good--or, well, a not bad day."

"Me too," Connor says so quietly that he might have just been saying it to himself.

"What, um--" because Evan likes to make things difficult for himself, and he just had to know if their lunch together was a fluke, he decides to ask, "was there anything about this particular day that made it not bad?"

"Well, I finished the milk again," Connor says with a snide turn to his voice than makes Evan think he's either smirking or grimacing, "and usually that would piss off my sister like I fucking sold her firstborn for drugs or something. But since I'm the poor, suicidal invalid of the household now, she had to sit there and grit her teeth because my mom would have bit her head off if she said anything to disturb my fragile mental state."

"Oh. That's, um--"

"Fucked up, I know. I'm trying not to be a total dick about it, but it's hard when my mom thinks I might jump out the window if someone looks at me the wrong way. Which she's not wrong about. But it's a lot."

"Yeah, that sounds, um--that sounds kind of suffocating."

"Yeah. To be honest, most of the day was pretty shit. My meds still fucking suck and everyone still thinks I'm a freak. I was planning on ditching and getting so high that I couldn't even remember my own fucking name, when this kid at my school who's been following me around like a stalker the past few weeks asks if he could eat lunch with me," Connor laughs incredulously. "And I took him out for pancakes. Can you believe that?"

"Huh," Evan says as nonchalantly as his malfunctioning pulse would allow. "Why do you think he wanted to--why was he following you around?"

"It's funny, because he's the kid who wrote the letter I was going to use as my suicide note. Turns out it was a therapy assignment," Connor snorts. "Which makes me feel a lot better about all the stupid shit my therapist is recommending I do, like starting a gratitude journal or recording my fucking dreams. As if documenting all the shit my brain produces will somehow make it start working normally."

"That's interesting," Evan says neutrally.

"He visited me at the hospital, because my parents apparently thought we were friends. And turns out he's lonely and desperate enough to think that the five minutes of awkward silence we spent together in the fucking insane asylum of all places was a sign that we'd be good friends or something."

"So--are you guys, um. Are you guys friends now, then?"

There's another long pause. Evan holds his breath and tries not to think about how much he does and does not want Connor to say yes. "I don't know," Connor says, and it sounds like a confession. It's the most vulnerable he's sounded since he started calling.

"You don't know?"

"That's what I just said, didn't I?" Connor snapped.

"Sorry," Evan says hastily. "I mean--"

"No, fuck, I didn't mean to--" Connor sighs in frustration. "This is exactly why that kid and I _aren't _going to be friends."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I mean," Evan can definitely hear him roll his eyes, "that I'm going to fucking make him cry or scare him away or something because my default setting is to go on a fucking rampage. He looked terrified out of his fucking mind over half the time I've seen him."

"Well, but if he approached you in the first place, maybe that means he isn't scared?" No, that's wrong--Evan was definitely scared out of his mind. "Or, at least, not so scared that he wanted to eat lunch with you?"

"I guess." There's a creak and a hollow tapping, and Evan can see him leaning back in his chair, drumming his fingers on his desk. "He said he had fun."

"That's something," Evan says as encouragingly as he can. "Would you--would you eat lunch with him again, if he asked?"

"I highly doubt he's going to ask again," Connor scoffed. "Honestly, he might just have asked the first time because he thought I was going to shove him to the ground. Again. He was probably just trying to save his own fucking skin. Or he did it out of pity, after he saw what a fucking mess I am."

"Well, you don't know for sure--"

"And you don't either," Connor says sharply.

"Sorry--"

"Fuck," Connor sighs, and there's more creaking. "O.K., fine. If he asks again I might say yes. Though he probably won't. It's probably better if he didn't. For his own sanity."

"But you'd say yes if he asked?"

"Probably?" Connor groaned. "Fuck, O.K., I had a good time. That was literally the most fun I've had since, I don't fucking know, since my weed dealer finally got Trainwreck."

So Evan was going to have to ask Connor Murphy to eat lunch with him again. He's not exactly sure how he feels about that. But he does feel pleased that Connor apparently didn't find Evan to be totally repulsive and socially inept. "Trainwreck?"

"It's good weed. I'm guessing you don't smoke." Connor laughs suddenly. "You should've seen his face when I bought a couple ounces from the waiter. Like he was already prepping for his mugshot after getting caught as an accessory to a crime or something."

"Sounds like a, um--an interesting guy," Evan says lightly. There's a borderline unpleasant heat creeping up his neck, but he can feel his mouth curving up despite himself.

"Yeah. That's one way to put it," Connor hums. "I kind of hope he does ask. I wouldn't even mind if he pukes all over the floor mid-sentence. I guess he's braver than I am, in that way."

"Braver how?"

"You really going to make me spell it out, Mark?"

"Or, well, if you don't want to--"

There's a loud slap, like Connor's slammed his palm against his desk, or maybe against his thigh. "You know what, why not--you already know how pathetic I am."

"You're not pathetic--"

"If we're going to keep talking on the phone, I'm going to need you to not fucking lie to me, alright?"

Which was a really bad and unfair request to make, because they're technically ten minutes over the time limit and Evan's been lying to him since two calls ago. "But you're really not," he says with a hard swallow. "You're not pathetic."

"Says the person who's never met me," Connor says in a vaguely muffled voice, like he's gnawing at a hangnail. "O.K., so if I'm not pathetic, then what am I? Pitiful? Sad? Crazy? Deranged? Freakish?"

"Um," Evan stares at his own gross and misshapen fingers. "Maybe troubled?"

Connor laughs again, and it's harsh and loud and still weirdly high-pitched, and Evan remembers how his shoulders shook, waving back and forth like they're about to snap in half. "That's a good one. I'll use that for my college apps, if I make it that far."

"Right," Evan squeezes his eyes shut and tries not to think about Connor not breathing before graduation. "It'll be inspirational. Like a--a comeback story."

Connor clears his throat. "This is how one troubled teen managed to not kill himself before the end of his senior year." Evan thinks he's aiming for an 'As Seen On TV' salesman vibe, but he sounds more like a morbid Alvin and the Chipmunks. "Click now to learn how he stopped being fucking crazy just in time for college!"

"Yeah. Like that."

"You're so fucking weird, Mark," Connor snorts. "You're like that kid at school. Clearly super fucking uncomfortable, but goes with it anyway. That's what I meant by brave."

"Oh." Evan sits back in his chair and doesn't flinch as much as usual when it squeals in protest. He never thought of it that way, before. "That's--that's really nice of you to say, Connor."

"Is it, really?" There's a loud creak, followed by a muffled _whumph_ and the rustle of fabric, like maybe he abandoned his desk for his bed. Evan wonders if he's the type of person who lies down and stares at the ceiling, or someone who sits at the edge of the bed with their elbows on their knees. "I've been whining about myself for, like, the past half hour. I didn't even ask you how your day was."

"Oh, that's O.K. I mean, that's kind of how warmlines work--"

"Could you please not remind me that you're only talking to me because you have to?" There's a loud _thwak_, and Evan thinks he threw his arm over his eyes and hit his elbow or his hand against the phone. "I know I'm a troubled loser, O.K.--"

"I didn't mean it that way! I meant that--well, I'd still want to talk to you even if it weren't through this...service," Evan winces. He tries not to think about how transactional that sounds. Because people do make meaningful connections--and maybe Connor felt that way, too. "Because--because I really do enjoy talking to you. It's just--I'm just better at listening than talking about myself, in general. So. So I don't mind."

There's another rustle, and then a long silence. "Alright," Connor says so softly that Evan presses the receiver harder against his ear, as if that would help him hear better. "I believe you, for now."

"O.K.," Evan breathes, allowing himself to not feel guilty just this one time. "Good."

"But it you're keeping me on the hook, then I sure as fuck will keep you there, too," Connor takes in a deep breath and lets it out in a crackle of static. "So tell me. How was your day, Mark?"

Evan thinks about following Connor around and being worried out of his mind, and he thinks about Jared being both meaner and nicer than usual, and he thinks about freaking out over the presentation he has to do for environmental science next week, and he thinks about getting in Connor's weed-infused car and participating in a drug deal and eating so many pancakes and throwing it all up because Connor doesn't understand what a speed limit is for, and he thinks about how he hasn't seen his mom in two weeks, and he thinks about how Connor still wants to die, and he thinks about his ulna throbbing every time he closes his eyes, and he thinks about Connor calling him weird and terrified and brave.

"Not bad," Evan says, finally. "Not bad at all."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Moral of the story is...don't do drugs, but if you do, do them responsibly, with responsible, sober friends!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, and for your ever kind support thus far--I'll try my best to make this as unexpected yet totally expected as possible!
> 
> Any and all feedback is much appreciated. :) See you at the next one!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok yeah I don't know how chapter breaks work, lol--but here we are!
> 
> and y'all, thank you so much for your encouragement and kind words--we have this monster of a chapter thanks to you!!!

For the first time in a long time (a long time meaning since he developed sense of self-awareness, of which was usually composed of 70% self-consciousness and 30% self-loathing), Evan was actually looking forward to going to school.

When he stumbles out of his room and into the kitchen, bleary-eyed because he was too keyed up and not filled with enough of his usual dread to sleep last night, he catches himself humming something tuneless and cheery under his breath because he was apparently still very keyed up and not filled with dread. It surprises him so much that he comes to a full stop in the doorway, smiling in spite of himself.

It's apparently also very surprising to his mom, who jerks up from her slump over the counter and nearly spills her coffee. "Evan," she exclaims. "You're up early."

He doesn't tell her that this is the time he usually gets up on schooldays. "Mom," he says in what he thinks is an abnormally pleasant tone. "You're back."

She looks sad and guilty for a moment, like she's still so caught off guard that she wasn't able to smooth it over into her usual overly optimistic grin. "Yeah, I, uh...I don't have a shift until noon."

Evan pours himself a glass of milk from the half-empty quart next to her elbow and sips it slowly. He thinks they might have ran out of creamer a few months ago. "That's good. You deserve a break."

"Yeah." She sounds a little lost. They both sip quietly from their cups, staring through the hard water stains streaking down the window over the sink at the pale sunrise cresting their weed garden. Evan wonders what it might look like if there were actual flowers and non-invasive plants growing in the bald patches where grass used to be. It'd probably look nice. He vaguely remembers seeing petunias lining the fence, back when his mom had time to do things that didn't involve making ends meet or printing out scholarship essays. Maybe he could, like, buy a packet of seeds from the dollar store and plant something, one day.

His mom clears her throat. "You're in a good mood today," she says lightly.

Evan stops humming. "I guess," he shrugs.

"Did something good happen at school recently?"

"No, not really," he says carefully.

She nods thoughtfully. There's something like amusement lifting her eyebrows and crinkling her forehead. "Someone signed your cast."

"Oh," he lifts his arm and laughs awkwardly, like he's surprised that she noticed the 100-point-font-sized name engraved in all caps on his forearm. Connor doesn't have very good handwriting. "Yeah, it's um--someone from my school."

"Uh huh," she finally grins behind her cup of coffee. "A new friend?"

He wants to tell her no, not really, because they really aren't friends at this point. Connor had said so himself. But Evan was actually feeling O.K. this morning, and his mom looked so giddy with half-baked hope, that he might as well stretch the truth just a little bit more. "I think so," he says to his glass of milk. "We, um, we ate lunch together yesterday. I plan on asking him if he wants to again, today." And it sounds so childish, like he's back in first grade asking if he could please sit with John at the lunch table or if Stacey would mind if he played with her on the monkey bars during recess. He'd stopped asking at some point because the words started taking too long to come out of his mouth, and he resigned himself to moping next to the teachers and pretending he didn't exist for hours at a time. It's hardly what anyone would call progress. But his mom puts a hand on his forearm, the non-broken one, and squeezes it gently.

"That's so great, honey," she beams. "I'm just--god, you're getting better day by day. Didn't I tell you? This is going to be our year."

"Yeah," he tries to smile back. He doesn't tell her that there's still a lot of time left for this year to go entirely wrong, or that he honestly doesn't think 'better' is something that applies to someone like him. But he lets them believe it just this once. "Maybe."

"Those letters must be really helpful, huh? And the call center!" She shakes her head, and Evan hopes he's imagining the sheen to her eyes. "I'm so proud of you, Evan."

"Thanks, Mom."

They sit together like that for a little while longer before his mom decides to make some 'celebratory omelets,' and as Evan watches her try and fail to find the spatula and decides not to tell her that the eggs expired three weeks ago, he's hit with just how much he missed this--how they used to have meals together two to three times a day; how they used to have movie nights and quiet nights under blankets with cups of warm tea; how he used to be able to tell her everything that happened to him during car rides back from school and just before bed, everything good and bad; how she used to be someone who could do anything, who he trusted more than anyone, who would never hurt him; how they used to not sound like broken records around each other, trapped in a loop of fake pride and well-wishes that don't come true; how the only lies they told other were small and white, like how his crayon drawing of a truck was beautiful enough to collect dust on the fridge until Evan finally tore it down years later on one of the first of many nights she wouldn't be at home, or how she did look very well-rested and super prepared for her job interview as a nurse's aide, even though he's finally noticed how red-rimmed and purplish her eyes are, how faint lines of stress and nerves are already starting to shadow her face. He thinks about how they'll never have that again, tries to remember the last day everything was O.K. for them both, and it makes his chest ache like there's something pressing against his breast bone, squeezing the air out of his lungs until the world tilts sideways just for a moment. For a moment he feels horribly, terribly resentful and angry that things worked out this way--that she's never home, that she was never able to make it work, that he could never count on her to be there when he needed her the most. But then he thinks of Connor's mom and how sad she looked, the horrible sound she made when she talked about her son, and he almost considers telling her everything. Or at least something.

"Hey, Mom," he chokes out before he can stop himself.

She's squinting at the stove like she's not sure if it's actually on, wooden spoon sticking out at an angle between her hand and her hip. There's a pile of half-diced tomatoes on the cutting board, a pale red stream slowly pooling over the edge and onto the counter. "Yeah, honey?" she says absently.

"I, um. I just wanted to let you know that I--" his voice dies out. Because what would he even say? What kind of a lede do you even start with? 'Don't get mad, but about this past summer...'? 'So I talked some people down from the metaphorical ledge, and I kind of wish someone was there for me, when I was on a not-so-metaphorical ledge, not that long ago'?

She turns around, having successfully gotten the egg batter to sizzle promisingly in the pan. She's smiling, looking so relieved like maybe she actually was worried that she had forgotten how to turn on the stove or make breakfast, and Evan knows that he's not going to tell her. He knows that maybe he'll never tell her, because she'll hate him for ruining things again. Because maybe some secrets are meant to taken with you to the grave.

"Sorry, what did you want to tell me?"

Evan shakes his head and smiles back at her. "Nothing important. I forgot already." He shoves his shaking hands in his pocket and nods towards the stove. "That smells really good. Did you, um--did you put, like, herbs or something?"

She lights up and starts talking through her cooking process, narrating as she decants the tomatoes and onions into the pan. Evan nods and makes the appropriate sounds of interest and follow-up questions at the right places. The whole thing feels vaguely like a conversation he might have at the call center, and he forces himself to look at her face the whole time because it makes him feel guilty, how scripted it all feels. But she's looking at him with this grateful expression when they're finally sitting at the small table in the kitchen nook for the first real meal they've had together in months, like maybe this was something she also thought they'd never have again. And this for some reason makes him feel worse than before.

"Hey, so, how are those scholarship essays going?" his mom says casually as they're putting away their plates. She insisted on washing them herself because of his stupid, terrible cast. "I was thinking maybe we could go over some of them when we have our night-in--I haven't forgotten!--or during one of my breaks."

The truth was, Evan hasn't really gotten very far them because he hasn't successfully overcome any of his major life adversities, and he definitely can't describe those in five hundred words or less. The few that he's started read like one of his therapy letters, which don't necessarily convey the 'force of character' or 'inspiring determination' needed to actually win money. But Evan also knows that their night-in is probably not going to happen, and that his mom is probably not going to have a break for at least the next decade, so: "I've started a few. It's um...slow-going. Been kind of busy with school, and the call center, and...stuff."

She knocks her shoulder against his. "You and me both," she chuckles. "Starting is still something! We can talk about whatever you have--not that I can help much. You've always been such a great writer. Remember that essay you wrote a few grades back? On _Sulu_? Mr. Johnson couldn't stop raving about how good it was."

"Yeah." It's _Sula_, he doesn't tell her. And it was Ms. Saffran; Mr. Johnson was his first grade teacher. "I remember."

She must have caught on to his waning enthusiasm, because she turns her optimism dial up a few degrees. "Well, hey, I can drive you to school this morning! I know how much you hate the bus. Maybe we can, like, try to out-NPR the NPR hosts--"

"I was actually thinking of walking to school," he glances at his slightly cracked, off-brand phone. "I have a presentation I need to practice for." Which wasn't not true, even though it's due at the end of the year and they haven't even picked topics yet. He was really worried about throwing up in front of the class before he can get a single word in edgewise. If anyone noticed him enough to put his name in for senior superlatives, he'd definitely be 'Most Likely to Be a Taste Tester,' because who else would be able to reliably tell you how good something tastes both going down and coming back up? But he mostly just didn't want to keep hearing her try so hard because he doesn't know how to not be a bad son.

"Oh," she falters like she suddenly lost her balance. But then she shakes her head and rights herself with a painful grin. "That's smart. I could learn something from you about good time management."

He doesn't know what to say, so he shrugs. "I should get going. Thank you for breakfast. It was really nice."

"Of course." She looks like she wants to say something more, but he can see her swallow it back down. He doesn't know if he's relieved or disappointed. "Have a good day at school, honey. Oh, hey," she brightens up again, and Evan doesn't know how she keeps flickering back on in spite of everything, doesn't want to think about when she'll run out of the energy to do it, "maybe you can ask Connor to come over sometime. I'd love to meet him."

It sends a disorienting jolt through him, hearing her say Connor's name. Like he's accidentally brought together these distant parts of himself that aren't meant to be connected, or let slip a secret that isn't completely his. "Yeah," he exhales as non-shakily as he can, "I'll ask him."

He's powerwalked maybe three blocks away from his very sad house and his very sad mom, trying to gather back the threads of that tentative lightness he felt when he first woke up, when he realizes that walking was a really bad fucking idea because he's going to be thirty minutes late to first period. Which was basically just as good as skipping first period--and they've already called his mom yesterday, and she knows that he decided to walk, and there's definitely not too many reasons between their house and school to fake not feeling well that don't involve being absolutely pathetic, like having a preemptive panic attack over a presentation that's thirty weeks away.

He's already sweating profusely in an awkward sprint-jog, determinedly not thinking about whether his shoelaces were properly tied or the embarrassing sweat stains slowly forming under his armpits and down his back or how many disgusting patches of moisture he's going to leave on his seat and his desk for the rest of the school day, when a car honks seemingly right next to his ear and he nearly crashes sideways into someone's well-manicured bush.

He's prepared to either get mugged or kidnapped, already has a scream at the back of his throat and his phone slipping between slick fingers jammed in his pocket, when Zoe Murphy calls out his name.

"What?" he says to her partially apologetic, mostly annoyed, ever disorientingly pretty and non-sweaty face sticking out of Connor Murphy's car.

"I said do you need a ride?" She looks him up and down, from his shining forehead to his ratty, slowly untying shoelaces. Evan wants to disappear into the shrubbery behind him.

"Oh, I, um--" he definitely needs a ride, but there's nothing he wants more and less right now than riding to school with Zoe Murphy. "You don't have to--"

"Get in the car, Hansen," Connor yells from her other side.

Evan gets in the car.

There's a faint strain of Today's Top Hits playing from the radio, which Zoe turns up into a comfortably deafening volume as soon as Evan managed to get his seat belt on. Much to his relief, Zoe obeys the traffic signals. He tries his best to not plaster his soaked polo against Connor's seats, which involved leaning forward an uncomfortable amount towards Zoe's strawberry-scented hair and Connor's pale, veiny, weirdly elegant hand on the center console. His black nail polish had chipped down into small, jagged circles.

"Thanks for, um," he says to Connor's hand, "thanks for picking me up."

"Sorry, what did you say?" Connor shouts over his shoulder. "I couldn't hear you over Zoe's terrible fucking music."

"If someone didn't decide to skip class," Zoe yells back, "he could've driven himself to school and listened to whatever shitty music he wanted."

"Fuck you," Connor screams.

"Fuck you," Zoe screams louder.

"Sorry," Evan squeaks, mostly to himself.

The rest of the ride was spent stonily listening to Ariana Grande having no tears left to cry. Connor shoves open his door before Zoe comes to a full stop, and stomps his way across the parking lot without looking back. The stream of students milling around the front of the building visibly parts for him like he's Moses, except angrier and ganglier and without an authoritative martyr beard. It's been a long time since Evan's been to the Synagogue.

Evan wants to call out his name, to ask if he's O.K., or if he maybe might possibly potentially want to eat lunch with him again today, but Zoe has just pulled the key out of the ignition, and now he's alone in a very quiet, weed-infused car with Zoe Murphy. He watches her take a few breaths through the rear-view mirror and holds his own until he starts to worry that he's forgotten how to breathe.

"Sorry about him," she says through her teeth. "He's in a bad mood because our parents took away his driving privileges."

"Oh, that's alright--"

"Are you two actually friends?" She whirls around suddenly, pinning him back with narrowed eyes. "Is he threatening you to hang out with him? Or is he just lying?"

"What? No, we're not--or, I mean, he's not threatening me. I think we're kind of friends? Maybe? I don't know. It's a little new, you know, like, we've hung out like maybe once or twice and we've talked to each other a couple of times but we haven't really had an official 'friendship status talk,' and friendship is kind of a vague concept anyway--" Evan winces because only he could turn a simple yes or no question into a semi-incoherent monologue. But it seemed like Zoe either didn't notice or care, because she leans even closer to him for the absolute opposite reason to all the reasons Evan has ever dreamed of her leaning closer to him, because he didn't know that she could look just as intimidating as her brother. He leans a little back and doesn't have enough misfiring neurons left to cringe at the shock of wet and cold cotton pressing against his skin.

"The last and only time I saw you two interact was when he shoved you to the ground." She looks apologetic for just a moment. "Sorry about that again, by the way. It seems like I'm always apologizing for him, these days."

"It's fine--"

But now she's looking at his unevenly tanned, slightly too hairy arms and frowning so deeply that it almost looks like a scowl. He also didn't know that Zoe Murphy could scowl. "So he did sign your cast."

"Oh. Yeah," Evan does not say he was the only one who did, and he does not ask Zoe Murphy if she also wants to sign his cast. "He did."

Zoe stares at the big, aggressive 'CONNOR' emblazoned on his arm for a few long moments more before sighing. "O.K. Maybe he wasn't lying," she huffs, before leaning over in one long stretch of freshly-ironed jean jacket and strawberry-scented hair to get her backpack from the empty seat next to Evan. Evan can hardly breathe.

They walk together in silence to the entrance of the school and all the way to Zoe's locker, which is practically on the other side of the building from Evan's, but he didn't know if he was supposed to stop and say goodbye or something suave like 'Well, this is mine--I'll see you around,' or if that would be really rude because maybe she wanted him to keep walking with her, which was highly unlikely, but neither of them have said anything since they left Connor's car. So he walked all the way with her to her locker and totally ignored Jared who was gaping after them and watched her enter her combination with three smooth turns and tug two large textbooks into her backpack. It's only when she's closed her locker door and hefted her backpack on her shoulders that she acknowledges him again, raising an eyebrow over a tight smile. "Well," she says, "I've got to get to class."

"Oh, yeah, yes, sorry," he stumbles. "Thanks for, um--thanks for driving me. I was running--literally," he laughs stupidly, "--running really late, and I really appreciate it."

She shook her head, mouth tilted wryly to the left. "Don't thank me. Connor was the one who told me to stop."

"Oh. That's--" he doesn't feel as disappointed as he thought he would. Maybe because any amount of recognition by anyone at all is in itself a small miracle. "That was really nice of him."

"Yeah. It was." Zoe works at the bottom of her lip as she studies him, gnawing it with her teeth. He also didn't know that this was something that she did. Evan tries his best to resist the urge to look down at his plain and overworn shoes, but he does anyway. He hears her sigh. "Be careful with him. I know my brother, and he's not a good person." She says this with a tired conviction that makes his chest ache. He remembers that night when Connor screamed about his family being better off without him, about terrorizing his sister, and he almost wants to tell her that maybe she doesn't really know him, to ask her how she could be so callous when. He has to squeeze his eyes shut for just a moment, to block out the distant sound of rattling.

"O.K.," he says, and lets the guilt settle heavy in his stomach for not defending him, or saying something a good friend would say. Because he doesn't know Connor Murphy and they're not really friends.

"Have a good day, Evan."

"Thanks, um, you too--" he tells his shoes as he listens to her walk away, all rapid, light taps of Converse on linoleum and clinking keychains. Nothing at all like Connor.

"So," Jared drawls obnoxiously into his ear, because he knows Evan startles easily, "it looks like someone is making progress on their Murphy fetish--"

"I have to get to class," he announces loudly enough for the entire school to hear before he powerwalks down the hallway. He catches a brief, nasty snippet of Jared telling someone that 'the Murphy crazy is rubbing off on him' and walks faster until he's sitting in first period and trying to remember how to breathe at a normal rate and hold a pencil in his hand and say his name audibly when the teacher does roll call.

He can hardly pay attention in the classes standing between him and lunch, which he knows is terrible because he literally can't afford to have his grades slip, because as much as he highly doubts that he's going to be able to pay for college, it's still a nice fantasy to at least try to keep alive. But he can't help but vibrate in his seat ( because jiggling his leg meant making the chairs squeak, which previously earned him very unwanted glares) trying to formulate a decently coherent way to ask Connor Murphy to eat lunch with him again.

When the bell finally rings for lunch, he's decided to stick with a simple, straight-to-the-point 'Do you want to eat lunch together?'. He's roaming the hallways near Connor's third period looking for a tall and aggressive tower of black, running the question over and over again in his head because Evan is the type of person who would mess up something as simple as this, because maybe instead of 'together,' he should specify 'with me,' and maybe he should also add 'again' after the 'together' or 'with me,' to emphasize that they had eaten lunch together previously, just in case he forgot, because Evan is a rather forgettable person. His heart somehow beats even faster than it has been in the past few hours as the heavy clunk of combat boots breaks through the usual lunchtime bustle just a few steps in front of him, and as he wades closer to an unmistakable draft of weed, Evan pushes aside the pleasant thought that he's going to have major cardiovascular problems when he gets older, because this is it. "Connor--"

But he doesn't get to ask the question he's been rehearsing for the past thirteen hours--he doesn't even know if Connor turned around or heard him in the first place, because Jared has grabbed his good arm and is dragging him down the hallway towards the cafeteria.

"Jared, what the hell--"

"Woah there, Loverboy--do you want to get eviscerated by Mr. Death Metal Incarnate?"

"He's not--he's just in a bad mood."

Jared stops abruptly and Evan nearly topples them both over. "A bad mood?" he snorts. "You call almost breaking some kid's nose for looking at him five seconds too long a bad mood?"

"O.K., so maybe he's having a bad day--"

"Or a bad seventeen years."

Evan pulls his arm out of Jared's grip. "Or a bad _week_." He cranes his head over the thinning crowd, a thrum of desperation running along his veins. "Look, Jared, I need to go--"

"Why are you so obsessed with him?" Evan looks back at Jared--really looks at him for the first time since maybe the start of the summer--and he's a little taken aback at the petulant frown that's taken up the entire lower half of his face and a bit of his chin and neck. Because Jared's actually upset. "First Zoe Murphy, and now her psychopath brother--are you trying to get into an incestuous threesome or something?"

Evan can feel the heat pooling underneath his polo and crawling up his neck, knows that he's turning an ugly shade of red, that Connor is slipping away. "Stop it, Jared--"

"You've clearly been avoiding me--and, honestly, I don't care what freaky shit you do in your free time, but you can't just ditch your Spanish partner of the past four years because you're horny."

So that was what he wanted. "If you just want my notes, I'll make copies for you."

"That's not--" When Jared frowns, it makes his eyes squint like he's either trying to hide the possibility that he's about to cry, or just extremely suspicious of any emotion other than his default amused, exasperated, or smug. "Why are they even letting you follow them around like a hyperventilating groupie?"

"Because maybe they actually want me around?" Evan can't help but snap, even though it's likely eighty percent not true. "And I'm not insulting them every time I see them?"

Jared rolls his eyes. "I told you, like, fifteen times--I'm _joking. _Jeeze. When did you become such a killjoy?"

When did you become such an asshole, Evan does not say. "Look, I'm sorry I haven't been around lately. I'll give you my notes later, O.K.?"

Jared throws his hands up in the air. "That's not--"

Evan doesn't want to know what 'that' he's getting wrong. "See you later, Jared," he says quickly, and bolts back down the hallway. He tries not to think about how this is maybe the fourth time he's very rudely ran away from Jared, even though he wasn't being as mean as usual this time around, but it's not very hard to push that thought to the very back of his head, because he has no idea where Connor went.

He walks outside to the parking lot with sweat prickling at the back of his neck, feeling like there's at least four separate security cameras trained on him and already transmitting a warning message to the principal and subsequently to his mom that he's about to go off school premises again. But there's no one outside, and it'd be weirder if he goes back inside and gets caught loitering in the hallway, so he whiteknuckles his backpack straps and soldiers on until he's standing in front of Connor's empty car.

And of course he's not there. Because Zoe has his keys, and it's not like he's going to just awkwardly stare at it while the sun beats down on his sweaty back, like Evan currently is. He doesn't know what he expected; he knows he didn't expect much, but he's still surprised at the curl of disappointment wrapping around his ribs. He stands there for what feels like a very long time. He can see his reflection in the passenger window sadly looking back at him in the middle of a blue sky, and it's so transparent and empty that Evan is struck with the sensation of being forty feet high in the air.

Which was why he nearly whacks off Connor's side view mirror with his backpack when Connor suddenly says behind him, "Are you planning on stealing my car, Hansen?"

"Fuck," Evan clutches at his chest, as if doing that has ever made his heart palpitations stop obediently. "Shit."

Connor's mouth twitches. "I'm guessing that's a yes?"

"No! Why would I--no, I'm not, I don't, like, of course I'm not trying to steal your car. I don't want your car. Not that it's a bad car! It's a great car. It's just that, sorry, I meant--"

"It makes you look more suspicious if you keep talking, you know."

Evan swallows back all the useless words he was going to say in one choked gulp. "Sorry."

Connor crosses his arms. "Did you forget something, then? Zoe has my keys, so you'll have to find her or wait until after school."

"Oh, no. No, I didn't, I was--I was actually looking for you."

A brief flash of surprise and something else that Evan couldn't quite catch sweeps over Connor's face before it settles quickly back into suspicion. "Why were you looking for me?"

"I, um. I just wanted to ask--" Evan preemptively cringes, because nothing about him has changed much from elementary school, "--if you maybe, um, would like to eat lunch? With me? Again?"

Connor stares at him.

"No pressure if not! I totally understand if you don't want to--I know I'm terrible at making conversation, and can be pretty boring and weird, and am just, like, terrible company, in general, so. No hard feelings. I mean, I wouldn't want to eat lunch with me, and I have to do that every day, theoretically--"

"I can't take you off campus," Connor says abruptly.

"Oh," Evan tries not to let his confusion show, because that would probably make Connor mad. Then again, a lot of things seem to make Connor mad. "Yeah, no, I didn't think we could. Zoe has your keys, right? And there's not a lot of places that are walkable from here. And we're not supposed to, anyway, so it's definitely better if we stayed on the premises. If that's O.K. with you?"

They stare uncomprehendingly at each other for several long extremely uncomfortable and sweaty moments before Connor coughs into his fist and jerks a thumb at the building behind him. "I'm sitting over there. If you want to join."

"Yes," Evan nods a few times too many. "That'd be neat." Neat, Evan? _Neat?_

But Connor's leading the way towards the spot where his messenger bag was still leaning against the wall. The ground is shaded by the eaves, cold and slightly damp enough to make Evan wince for his freshly-washed and arguably favorite pair of pants, but Connor has already settled his long limbs down like some kind of a broody, grunge model. So Evan sits with his legs tightly crossed, not thinking about the wet stain slowly forming on his khakis.

And they sit there not looking at each other. Or, at least, Evan isn't looking anywhere but at the little blackened circle of gum right next to his feet, because he's realizing that he's planned only up to the point of asking to eat lunch together, and not the actual eating lunch part. He listens to the hollow drip of the gutter and considers asking Connor how his day was going--though he already knows the answer isn't going to be 'good,' clearly, which would probably annoy him more than anything. Or maybe he could ask him if he was ready for midterms, even though they're nowhere near the middle of the school year and Connor doesn't seem like the type of person who even writes down the homework. Or maybe he could ask him about--

"You know you can eat your lunch, right?" Connor says as he digs into his bag and pulls out the baggie of yellow-green and a wax square of paper. "I don't have a window to throw it out of, this time."

"Oh, yes," Evan scrambles to pull his crumpled brown paper lunch bag out of his backpack. "I forgot."

Connor snorts. "Arguably the most important part of lunch," he mutters, but there doesn't seem to be any heat or ridicule to it. Like he's just stating a fact, or repeating something he's heard before. So Evan unwraps his limp sandwich and watches him tap out a line of weed and carefully roll it into a thin cylinder. It's the most calm he's ever seen him. Connor only seems to notice him watching when he's got it between his lips with a lighter at the ready. "Do you have a problem with me smoking?"

"No!" Evan shakes his head vigorously, even though he definitely does have a problem with Connor smoking on school premises while Evan's sitting next to him, surrounded by security cameras. "I just--are you not eating?"

"Nope," a blue flame materializes with a click, stretching languidly around the tip of the paper until it's bright orange. "Mom's on a gluten-free and keto kick. Because carbs apparently make you want to kill yourself." Connor takes in one long breath, cheeks hollowing around his fingers. He lifts his head and blows out a stream of white smoke, and Evan thinks of the air pooling in his lungs, funneling through the long column of his weirdly frail neck and escaping into the sky. Thinks of what it was like to hear him gasping into the phone, what it must have sounded like when he was choking up the pills. If he was still breathing when they found him.

When Connor turns his head towards him, Evan reflexively takes an overly large bite of his sandwich and tries not to gag. Connor rolls his eyes back up to the sky. They watch the clouds crawl across the blue in thin, insubstantial wisps.

"What's your deal, Hansen?"

"My deal?" Evan says grossly around the bread and cheese paste sticking to the roof of his mouth.

"Are you hanging out with me because you still have a creepy crush on my sister?" Connor glares at him, and though the weed has taken a lot of the barbed edges off, that doesn't make Evan want to disappear into the floor any less. "Because if you are--"

"I'm not!" He swallows his bite of semi-food down so hard that he can feel it hurtling painfully down his throat. "I don't--"

"Don't lie and tell me you don't like her anymore because you think I'm going to punch you--"

"I wasn't! And I--O.K., I still like her. Kind of. A little bit. More than a little bit. But, honestly, I only started liking her because she was nice to me one time. I don't have very high standards. Not that your sister isn't a very high standard! I know she's way out of my league, and I have absolutely no chance with her--"

"I'm not going to be your wingman, if that was what you were going for."

"And I'm not asking you to be!" Evan has squeezed his sandwich into an even more inedible, nutritionally deficient blob. "I just wanted to eat lunch with you. Really."

Connor stares at him with half-lidded eyes, his mouth in a flat, inexpressive line. He takes another long hit and the smoke seems to hang in the air, more substantial than anything else around them. "Did she tell you what a fucking monster I am, yet?"

"No?" Evan's not sure if he's lying or not. Does not being a good person equate to being a monster?

"I threatened to kill her once," he says casually to his joint. "Almost broke down her door, saying I was going to strangle her to death. I might have, too, if my dad hadn't tackled me to the ground and held me down with his knee on my back for so long that I fucking blacked out."

Evan very carefully holds his tongue between his teeth and slowly bites down until it stings.

Connor laughs, and it sounds both hollow and genuine. "I don't even remember what I was so angry about. I remember smashing her ukulele to fucking pieces in front of her face one day because we were arguing about something stupid, and watching her cry without feeling anything at all. I kept daring her to hit me, because I knew that she wouldn't, even if she really wanted to. It was like I was spitting in her face."

Evan squeezes his eyes shut and opens them again. "Why are you telling me this?"

"I don't know." Connor tilts his head back until it hits the wall with a thud. His pale neck bobs up and down, skin thin enough to be translucent. "In case you want to think twice before asking the school shooter to be your friend."

There's a lot of things Evan can and maybe should say to this. Things like: Are you being serious? Have you actually thought about shooting up the school before? Do you regret what you did to Zoe? Are your meds still making you feel like a zombie? Do you still believe that you're a monster? Do you want to be friends? What do I need to do to make you not kill yourself before the end of the year? Are you O.K.?

But Evan doesn't say any of this. He lets it hang in the lukewarm air like a cloud of smoke, and they sit there looking non-existent cloud formations until the bell rings. He lurches up to his feet and awkwardly pats at the back of his slightly wet thighs. Connor hasn't moved or looked up from his joint. "Are you, um. The bell rang," Evan winces. Of course he heard the bell ringing directly above them. "Are you going to class?"

"No," Connor murmurs. He looks almost peaceful, like he's about to drift to sleep. "I can't. Not right now."

"O.K.," Evan says to Connor's boots. "Thanks for, um--thanks for letting me sit with you." Because neither of them really did much lunch eating, or anything other than sitting.

When he looks back up, Connor has closed his eyes, nodding slowly like maybe he didn't really hear him, and Evan really should go, but he doesn't want to end on this horrible confession or warning or threat or whatever it was that Connor meant it to be. He thinks about Connor telling him over the phone that yesterday was the most fun he's had in a long time, that he wouldn't mind if he puked all over his shoes if Evan asked him to do it again. He thinks about Connor calling him brave. "And thanks for--thanks for picking me up this morning. Zoe told me that you told her to stop. I was running really late, and was really gross and sweaty and panicking and--and it was really kind of you to do that. So thank you. I really appreciate it."

Connor opens his eyes and blinks at him. Once, twice--slowly, a little like Nick from the pancake place, but with a strange force to it, like he's been shaken awake. He opens and closes his mouth, then drops his eyes back on the smoking joint between his fingers, brows scrunched together like he doesn't know how it got there. "It wasn't a big deal. I know how much you hate being late."

He says it like he's known this for a while, like they've reached the point where they're familiar enough with other to be able to state obscure personality quirks with a measure of fondness and nonchalance. To Connor, Evan is weird, brave, and someone who hates being late. "It was a big deal to me, though. So thank you for--for noticing. And doing what you did."

Connor flicks some ash to the ground. "You're welcome," he mumbles.

The warning bell rings, and Evan nearly jumps out of his skin. "Well, I, um--I got to get to class. See you--see you tomorrow?"

"Yeah," he tilts his head back up to the sky. "See you tomorrow."

So it went both better and worse than he expected. Somehow. But Evan doesn't have a black eye or another broken bone, and Connor said he'd see him tomorrow. Which could just be a formality, but could also mean that Connor's safe for one more night. Evan spends the rest of the school day thinking about how he more than anything wants someone to tell him if he's doing the right thing--how he wishes it didn't feel like he was holding someone's life in his sweaty, shaky hands. And it's mostly ironic, because he's thinking about this at the bus stop waiting to be taken to a licensed professional who's definitely more qualified to deal with life or death matters than Evan, no matter how questionably effective he's been with Evan himself (though that's probably on Evan--he's probably something that can't be fixed, just barely held together with bits of tape and a constant supply of generic Xanax). He just needs a sign.

Of course, that's when Jared comes roaring up in his mom's mom van. Evan vaguely remembers him mentioning that the tires of his actual car got slashed and was undergoing intensive bodywork. That was maybe a year and a half ago. "Need a ride, loser?" Jared smirks at him with his glasses pulled down the bridge of his nose like they're aviators, or some other form of eyewear cooler than Transition glasses.

"Oh, no, I'm fine," he says persuasively.

Jared's smirk melts swiftly into a frown. "Don't you hate the bus?"

Evan does hate the bus. But he also doesn't want to find out why Jared is suddenly offering to drive him again, after Evan supposedly embarrassed him by having an impromptu panic attack in his car when Jared was trying to impress this girl he had a crush on with his new semi-used, faux-sports car. "I don't want to trouble you--"

"Don't give me that fake polite shit," Jared rolls his eyes. "You have therapy, right?"

"I do," Evan can't help the dumb surprise that lifts his brows into his hairline. "You remembered."

"Not that hard to remember when you always look like you're about to have a brain aneurysm," Jared says snidely. "Look, my mom thinks we're not friends anymore and is threatening to take me off the insurance policy. I'm literally offering you a free ride. Could you please get in the car before the bus rear-ends me?"

Evan sighs and, because he's completely incapable of saying no to things that he actually wants to say no to, and he would actually feel really bad if Jared's mom's mom van got rear-ended by a bus, he gets in the car.

Jared has the radio turned on to some hip hop station playing a song listing out activities that he looks clearly, increasingly uncomfortable with. Evan's not sure who he's trying to impress. "I didn't know you liked rap," he says mildly.

"It's a new thing," Jared's fingers twitch self-consciously from where they're clenched around the wheel.

"That's cool," Evan says encouragingly. This doesn't seem to make Jared feel any better, though, because he reaches over and turns the volume dial all the way down until there's just faintly clicking high hats and murmurs. And maybe Evan shouldn’t have said anything, because now it's very quiet, and they're both uncomfortable, and there's at least fifteen minutes to go before they get to Dr. Sherman's office. Evan busies himself with picking at his cast before realizing that he's leaving little flecks of plaster on his lap that will end up on his seat or the floor and annoying both Jared and his mom if they find it. So he focuses on sitting very still and willing traffic to move faster.

Jared clears his throat, and Evan's entire body sighs in disappointment. "So," he says in the most non-nonchalant way possible, "what's up with you and the Murphys?"

"Nothing is up with me and the Murphys."

"It can't be nothing if you're hanging out with them all of a sudden. Do they owe you a favor, or something?"

Evan deeply regrets not taking the bus. "Why do you suddenly care so much about me and the Murphys?"

"I don't care so much about _you _and them, personally--just the scandal you're clearly hiding from me," Jared says glibly as he blows through a yellow light. "Think about it: Hot Topic disappears for almost a whole month; as soon as he comes back, you're suddenly BFFs with him. And now, Zoe Murphy's letting you follow her around like a lost puppy. That's suspiciously coincidental, isn't it?"

Only if you're into obscure conspiracy theories, Evan doesn't say. "We just started talking and became friends. They gave me a ride to school this morning. That was why I was talking to Zoe."

"Sure," Jared scoffs. "So you managed to form a complete sentence around the kid who--let me remind you--s_hoved you to the ground_, and apparently that was enough to make him want to become friends with _you_?"

He says the 'you' like that's the most unbelievable part--not necessarily that he's friends with Connor, but that anyone would want to be friends with Evan. Awkward, incoherent, socially inept Evan. Heat rises up the back of his neck, and Evan realizes that, for the first time in a long time, it's anger rather than embarrassment. "That's what I said. And that's what happened. If you don't--if you don't want to believe me, then that's your problem."

Jared shoots him a sharp glance, like he's not sure if he just imagined Evan actually standing up for himself for once. The car swerves uncomfortably towards the curb before righting itself. "No need to get all defensive," he grumbles. "It just doesn't make any sense."

"I know it's just so _crazy_ to think that anyone would want to hang out with me," Evan retorts, and it sounds so ugly and bitter to his ears that he knows it's still true, no matter what this new thing between him and Connor might be.

"O.K., I didn't say _that_," Jared sighs.

"Are you sure? Because that's what I heard. In fact, that's what I've been hearing for the past thirteen years that we've known each other."

"Don't blame me for looking like you're going to freaking _pass out_ every time you talk to someone," Jared exclaims, thrusting his hand at the road like it's a panorama of all of Evan's failed past attempts at human interaction. "If it weren't for me, you wouldn't even have anyone to talk to! You know how much street cred I've sacrificed by being seen with you over the years? It's like, you're already weird in the most uncool way, and _now_ you're going to affiliate with the one person that's maybe lower than you in the food chain? Like, are you _trying_ to commit social suicide--"

"Please stop the car," Evan hears himself say.

"What?" Jared jerks his head, the car following after. Someone honks at them, leaning against the horn until Jared tilts back into the lane, absentmindedly flipping the bird at an actual sports car that zooms by them. For some reason, Evan doesn't feel afraid. "Why? We're, like, five minutes away from your shrink."

"Please stop the car," Evan hears himself say again. There's blood rushing in his ears. He's already unbuckling his seat belt.

"Like, right now?" Jared says incredulously. "Look, I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings or whatever, but I'm just telling the truth--" He must have glanced back just as Evan opens the door, because he can hear him screaming over the air buffeting his face. "_What the hell are you_\--O.K., fine, I'm pulling over, I'm pulling over! Just _close the freaking door_\--"

Jared pulls the car up against the curb to a chorus of honks, cutting off an enraged biker who yells for a solid minute before slapping the windshield and pedaling away. Evan steps onto the sidewalk with trembling legs, just barely managing to not slam the door on his fingers. He's stumbled maybe a full block away before he registers Jared inching along in the bike lane like they're in a stupid teen rom com, except without the romance or the comedy, window rolling down to reveal his disgruntled face.

"Evan, dude," Jared says with a weirdly subdued exasperation, "I'm sorry, O.K.? I didn't mean to, like, imply that _no one_ wants to be your friend. I mean, we're friends--"

"We're _family friends_, Jared," Evan shoots back, keeping his eyes focused on the distant square block that's Dr. Sherman's medical office building. "There's a difference. Remember?"

Jared groans. "Come on, how many times do I have to tell you? That was a _joke_\--"

"If everything's a joke to you, then nothing about me, or the Murphys, or--or _anything at all_ should matter to you, right?"

"Jesus," Jared huffs indignantly, "did Connor Murphy infect you with his anger management issues? What's next--you gonna go full emo and start wearing black polos and hide razor blades in your cast? Was that what you guys bonded over? Like, did you compare suicide notes and ask for pointers--"

Evan comes to a full stop. "That's not funny, Jared."

"I'm just _kidding_\--"

"It doesn't _matter_\--" there's a sharp pain running along the side of his arm, pressing against his sternum until it takes everything he has to squeeze in a single, rattling breath. "You can't--you can't say things like that."

"You're totally overreacting--"

"Thanks for the ride," Evan says curtly. "Please leave me alone."

Evan walks and walks and walks until he's gasping at the corner of the medical office building, hands braced against his knees. He's not sure if he's having a panic attack or if he's just panicked and incredibly out of breath. He's almost certain that a security guard or a patient or some staff person will turn the corner any minute and ask if he's O.K., will make him sit down and do breathing exercises or give him an emergency Xanax--because the best place to have a mental breakdown should be outside your therapist's office, right? But minutes pass, and nobody comes, and Evan forces himself to breathe in through his nose and out through his mouth until it feels like he's back in his body again.

When he steps into Dr. Sherman's office, nothing feels quite real. Like he's just a fuzzy disturbance in the air that takes up too much space but not enough to be really there. He stares at the slightly yellowing potted plant molting leaves onto the floor (_Devil's vine_, he thinks distantly, _Epipremnum aureum_), debating whether or not he should just walk back out the door and keep walking until he's collapsed into his bed. But Dr. Sherman calls him in with the usual professional smile that never reaches past the corners of his mouth.

They make the usual pleasantries, and Evan picks at his cast and gives his usual monosyllabic responses. He asks about school, his mom, the call center, his meds. But then Dr. Sherman puts his clipboard down on his desk and leans forward with his elbows on his knees. His face has a slightly oily sheen to it, and there's a faint scar at the corner of his left eyebrow that Evan hadn't noticed before. "Evan," he says slowly in a way that usually means he's going to ask something Evan doesn't want to answer, "you know you can tell me anything, right? That this is a completely confidential space?"

Evan tries to keep his face very still. "Yes?" he says carefully.

Dr. Sherman twirls the gold band around his finger, and Evan wonders if that's a nervous habit or just something he does when he's thinking. "I heard from one of my colleagues that there's student at your school who tried to commit suicide recently. Is that true?"

Evan flinches involuntarily, and he hates how he has so little control over his body, his brain, over anything in his life. He looks down at his shoes, and can feel the weight of Dr. Sherman's gaze dissecting his every movement. "Yeah. Yeah, um--I think so."

"Do you know him?"

"No," Evan wheezes out, "no, not really."

"Not really?"

"We, um. We had a few classes together before. But I haven't--we don't talk much."

Dr. Sherman doesn't say anything. He doesn't say anything for so long that Evan risks looking back up to find him staring somewhere below Evan's face. More specifically, he's staring at Evan's broken arm, with the name of said student scrawled across like a tag. Evan resists the urge to curl in on himself, because that would only draw more suspicion. How much does he know? Does Connor's therapist also work in the same building? If it's confidential, they can't swap patient names, can they? For a second, Evan considers telling him what happened, because all of this wouldn't be happening if he didn't sign Evan up for the warmline in the first place. Someone else far more capable would have handled the call, and Connor Murphy would still be alive and would stay alive, and Jared would still be nasty but wouldn't hate him like he probably does now, and he wouldn't have to lie to his mom or Dr. Sherman or anyone else more than he usually does.

But Dr. Sherman clears his throat. "I'm asking because something like that can be really hard on the people close to them. So I just wanted to make sure you're doing O.K."

Evan squeezes his eyes shut and opens them again. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine."

"O.K., Evan," Dr. Sherman finally sits back, placing his clipboard back in his lap. Evan watches him scribble a long sentence, and wishes he was like one of those doctors or nurses at the ER who just ask their standard questions and type in his answers without ever looking away from their computer screen. But the whole point of therapy is to make you uncomfortable, right? Or maybe Evan just has a bad therapist. One who pushes too much and not enough at all. "Alright then," Dr. Sherman smiles pleasantly at him. "So how are the letters going?"

Evan walks out of the medical building feeling worse than he had going in, which was saying something. He walks past the bus stop and keeps walking until the streetlights start to flicker on. He walks past the call center, and vaguely remembers that he offered to cover someone's shift today. He thinks about sending an email to tell Jenna or some other staff member that he isn't feeling well, then wonders if anyone would actually notice if he wasn't there. They actually might, if only to be angry at him because they're short-staffed. There's probably an irony to that, but it doesn't make him feel any better.

No one stops to offer him a ride this time, and he doesn't know if he feels relieved or disappointed.

There's twenty dollars on the counter and a water-stained post-it note from his mom reminding him to eat dinner, that she's proud of him and to please say hi to Connor for her. There's a goofy smiley face at the corner, the eyes uneven and the loop that's supposed to be the tongue breaking into an abrupt line that goes off the side and onto the tile, like she was physically pulled away mid-stroke. Evan walks the note back to his room and puts it carefully on the far corner of his desk. He sits on his bed and stares at nothing for a long time until his phone buzzes. It's Jared.

_Hey_

_Sorry about earlier_

_I didn't mean to trigger you or whatever_

_Are we OK or are you going to freak on me again?_

Evan places his phone on his desk and turns off the light. He falls back into the dark thinking about all the things he did and didn't do, the things he did and didn't say. The possibility that he's doing the right thing, and the probability that everything is actually going completely wrong. How it seems like everything has changed, and nothing has changed at all.

Dread coils back around him, slick and bitter and cold, and he hates how comfortingly familiar it is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In sum: Evan just needs to get a bike like the girls on Eurphoria, lol.
> 
> I kept debating whether to move some of these scenes to later parts, because this is probably too much all at once and maybe a little bit disjointed (it's felt like, you get a scene! and you get a scene!), but decided to keep it all in there anyway because why not? This is probably less of a plot-moving-forward than a character study and set-up for shit tons more Drama and Plot Twists, ahaha.
> 
> I also realize I'm not very familiar/comfortable with writing Jared? I have some idea of what role he'll play later on, but I'm not sure if he's coming off as OOC or sufficiently Jared-like, lol.
> 
> (Also--is this like the first fic in this fandom where Dr. Sherman might actually be a competent therapist? lol)
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and sharing your thoughts and support--I'm, like, overjoyed with every comment I read! 
> 
> See you at the next one! :)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> surprise, surprise: things get...epistolary

Much to his continued relief, Evan does see Connor the next day. Completely evaporating that relief, however, Connor demands that they exchange numbers.

Evan found him leaning against the far edge of the wall of the school entrance maybe fifteen minutes before first period, looking both out of place and like he perfectly belonged there--like one of those classic high school delinquents you'd see on TV, or like a shady figure lurking in the shadows of a seedy bar. But without a cigarette or joint between his fingers, he mostly looked awkward and uncomfortable, glaring at the kids who looked even more awkward and uncomfortable turning the corner and almost running into The Connor Murphy Himself.

But when he spots Evan standing in the middle of the walkway openly staring at him and blocking traffic, he gives him a small wave that Evan almost wants to call shy. Evan waves back, and that seemed to be enough invitation for Connor to kick off the wall and stride purposefully across the lawn towards him. For a moment, there's an off-kilter tilt of fluorescent light shining in his eyes and a phantom brush of hard, cold linoleum against his limbs, fear wrapping around his throat. But Connor stops just a few feet short of him, and the world rights itself again. He's clutching the strap of his messenger bag like it's a lifeline, with a weirdly tentative expression on his face. Evan tries to lift his mouth into something like a smile.

"Hey, um, hey Connor--"

"We should exchange numbers," Connor abruptly declares.

Evan must have stared at him for too long in his shock, because Connor grips his messenger bag even tighter and contorts his face into a dark scowl.

"If you don't want to talk to me outside of school, you should just say it to my face--"

"No! No, I do want--exchanging numbers sounds great." Evan is going to pass out. Any minute now. He honestly doesn't know how Connor hasn't connected the same stuttering, incoherent mess that is Evan in real life with Mark from the warmline yet (maybe his voice does sound more nasally and terrible over the phone), but he definitely will now. "I'd--I'd really like that."

"Oh," Connor has that same slackjawed look of surprise from yesterday, tilting backwards like he's momentarily lost his balance. He pulls out his phone, screen cracked straight down the middle. "Alright. What's your number?"

"Actually," Evan blurts out, "could we not? Exchange numbers?"

Connor looks sharply up at him with a glare. "Are you fucking with me--"

"I'm not! I just--" there's people staring at them, and the sun is too warm for this time of the year, and Evan is going to pass out or throw up or die. "I don't--we have a limited phone plan. And--and my mom prefers that we save texts and minutes for, like, emergencies. So. So I wouldn't be able to respond to you without, like, making it super short or making my mom mad." He winces because that was technically true until maybe a few years ago, when the hospital his mom worked at finally added cell phone carrier discounts for employees. But Connor doesn't know that, and he's looking at him incredulously, like who's still so poor that they're not on an unlimited phone plan?

"Oh. That sucks."

"Yeah, um," Evan swallows. "Maybe we can--maybe we can exchange emails instead? Do you use email?"

Connor narrows his eyes. "Email? Seriously?"

"Sorry, I know it's--I know it's really lame, and definitely not as convenient and accessible as texting or talking on the phone. Not that I would know, since I don't usually text or talk on the phone to anyone other than my mom, which is really sad, I know--"

"No, it's fine," Connor huffs. He doesn't actually look as miffed as Evan expected him to be. "It's probably better that way. I'm pretty sure my parents wiretapped my fucking phone. My dad definitely snoops through my old email account."

"That's--that's really intrusive."

"Try telling them that. They probably think they'll eventually catch me selling drugs or whatever on the black market, like some wannabe who didn't bother investing in a burner phone. Or uses just one email account for both personal and business affairs."

Evan nods. "Yeah. Yes. That--that makes sense. That's smart. Smarter, I mean."

"I don't sell drugs, just to be clear."

"I didn't think you did! I was just agreeing with what you said. About--about proper, um. Proper...drug selling technique."

The corner of Connor's mouth quirks up in maybe the closest thing to a smile Evan has gotten from him so far. "Do you have a piece of paper, or a pen? Or should I just write it on your cast?"

Definitely not on the cast. Evan digs through his backpack and thrusts one of his notebooks and that stupid sharpie from the first day of school that he for some reason still carried around into his hands. Connor scrawls his email across the page in the same all-caps block letters that run into each other, taking up both too much space and not enough. Evan squints and makes out a fairly normal-sounding 'mirthco_98@gmail.com.'

"I thought it would be ironic enough to avoid detection. Because clearly I'm so full of mirth," he deadpans.

"That's clever," Evan smiles weakly. "Mine's pretty boring. I'll, um--I'll send you an email, later today? So you have it?"

"Sure," Connor exhales. "Sounds good."

They stand there in the middle of the walkway, awkwardly looking adjacent of each other. "So, um," Evan tries, "are you—what's your first period?"

"English," Connor grimaces. "Normally I wouldn't mind. It's the one subject I can tolerate. But we have a group project and my partner's a fucking asshole."

"Oh." It's still weirdly disarming to hear Connor talk casually about normal, mundane things. Connor hates Econ and usually likes English. He skips breakfast and thinks Nutella tastes good on everything. "I hate group projects, too. In general, I mean. Obviously," he adds with a useless handwave, just in case Connor was one of those people who found people stating the obvious to be really annoying. "I usually beg the teacher to let me do it on my own. Have you--maybe you can ask if they'd let you do that? If it's not too late. Do you--if you have Ms. Blakely or Mr. Liu, they let me do some projects on my own."

"I'm pretty sure Blakely hates me only marginally less than Douché," he rolls his eyes. "But I might give it a try."

"Great," did Evan just give someone good advice they were actually going to take? "I hope it, um. I hope it all works out."

"Thanks."

"Well. Will I--I'll see you at lunch?"

Connor's eyes dart around his face, like maybe he's still not convinced that Evan isn't just some secret asshole wearing a mask he's going to pull off any minute and laugh at him for falling for this extremely drawn out and incredibly cruel prank. Or maybe Evan's just projecting. "Yeah," Connor drops his eyes and shifts his messenger bag on his shoulder. "Meet you at the same spot outside?"

"Definitely," Evan nods way too enthusiastically. Not that Connor even saw it. "Looking forward to it."

Connor gives him a lopsided twist to his mouth that Evan will call amusement, and nods before stalking back across the walkway, up the stairs, and disappearing behind the doors. Evan stands there stupidly staring at the faint imprints of his combat boots on the grass, like he needs to convince himself that this version of Connor Murphy that's maybe kind of sort of his almost friend actually exists, because he subconsciously still can't believe any of this is really happening. Then the warning bell rings, and Evan remembers that he has a math exam he didn't study for that he absolutely cannot afford to fail, and--

Most of the schoolday passes by in a blur of frantically taking notes and biting his nails and then his hangnails and then his cuticles and then his actual finger tips until they're bleeding and so gross that he's scared of putting them near his mouth again. So he starts chewing his lips raw, and he knows it's probably looking really bad, because his math teacher takes a single glance at the slightly bloodstained corners of his exam then looks up at him like she's going to say something delicate, but he ducks out quickly with a muttered apology because really doesn't want to hear it. And he has to avoid Jared. And he does manage to avoid Jared, probably because he's essentially sprinting to his classes, and even though he knows people are probably staring and laughing at him, that he's got sweat marks under his armpits and down his back, he'd rather any of that than have another awkward conversation with Jared again. Which was probably saying something.

By the time lunch rolls around, Evan's shaking with both exhaustion and excess energy, like there's ants racing under his skin over leaden bones. He rushes to the perpetually damp spot under the eaves next to the parking lot, and is both disappointed and relieved that Connor isn't there. Yet, at least. Or maybe at all.

He sinks down onto the concrete and lets himself rest his head on his knees for just a few moments. Shivering and breathing and shivering some more. There's static crackling in his ears, a broken fuse filling his skull with smoke and heat that pulse against his eyes. He hasn't decided if he's going to hyperventilate or throw up yet. Because of course his brain can't even make up its own mind about whether or not it wants to make everything harder than it needs to be, so it just holds his body hostage for seventeen years and counting.

"Hey," Connor Murphy says awkwardly. He's a long, dark column stretching high enough to block out the sun, a little blurry around the edges like a smudged strip of film. Evan's almost glad he can't see his expression. "Are you O.K.?"

"Yeah," Evan lies. "Sorry I'm just--" he rubs his eyes and much to his horror, his hands come off wet, "--I'm just a little tired."

"Oh," Connor says. He scuffs his boots against the ground, a low, heavy scrape that for some reason reminds Evan of funerals--of what it sounds like to drive a shovel into the dirt. "That sucks."

It seems like today is the day Connor gets to discover some of the extent to which Evan sucks. "Sorry," Evan sniffs and it's disgustingly wet. He wipes his eyes across his good arm, which probably only made it worse. "I'm sorry, I get it if you don't want to eat lunch with me right now. Or ever. I know I'm a--sorry, I can just leave--"

"Hansen, sit the fuck down," Connor throws his messenger bag against the wall. Evan somehow manages not to flinch. Probably because his brain has given up on self-preservation. "I don't care if you're feeling tired. We're hanging out." He pauses, somewhat less blurry eyebrows knitting together. "Not that I mean--I don't mean that I _don't_ care that you're tired. I'm not trying to be a dick."

Evan sits back down. Mostly because his legs have decided to give up on him too. "No, I get it." He tries for a weak smile. "Thanks. For, um. Not caring."

"It's what I do best," Connor mutters as he throws himself onto the ground next to Evan. There's at least five inches of space between them. Which is both a lot and none at all.

They both stare at the meager clouds scudding across the pale blue sky. At least, that's what Evan's doing--he's not exactly sure if Connor's looking at the same thing. Everything feels muffled and distant, like his head is full of water sloshing between his ears and leaking from his eyes and nose. He sniffs way too loudly and tries not to shake.

There's the sound of velcro being torn apart and a zipper sliding roughly against its teeth. For a brief, delirious moment, Evan wonders if Connor's looking through his backpack to find his meds because he knows he's a nutcase who needs drugs to function at the bare minimum, or maybe he's trying to steal his notes or his therapy letters. But then something prods his arm, just above the cast.

"Here," Connor mumbles, looking steadfastly at the brown carton and water bottle in his hands.

Evan looks incomprehensibly at the tangled and greasy mat of hair draping over his face. "What?" he says usefully.

Connor's face pinches into a scowl. "Take it. It's for you."

"Oh, I don't--"

"You're fucking crying, Hansen," Connor shakes the box at him. It doesn't sound like drugs. Of the recreational kind. Not that he'd know what recreational drugs rolling around in a box sound like. "Drink some water. And take the damn carton."

Evan takes a sip of water (only after nearly spilling it all over himself when he unscrews the cap a little too forcefully) and opens the carton. It's a powdered waffle with blueberries and chocolate chips on top, completely smothered in Nutella. "Oh."

He must have been staring at it for a little too long, because Connor sighs heavily beside him. "Are you going to eat it or not?"

"I don't have a fork," Evan says stupidly.

"For fucks sake," Connor violently digs into his messenger bag and pulls out a fancy-looking metal fork that he subsequently thrusts under Evan's nose, pointy twines first. "Do you need a napkin, too? Because I don't have that."

"No, I don't need--sorry," Evan sputters, possibly hyperventilating or suffocating, he's not sure yet. Not that there's much of a difference--he can't untangle the words stuck in his throat, either way. "I didn't mean—I'm just--"

"Look, if you don't want it, you can throw it away for all I care--"

"No, no, no--sorry, I just, I didn't mean--"

Connor slowly retracts his fork. He's still scowling murderously, but his eyes are wide open in bewilderment. "Breathe, Hansen." He raises his hands up like maybe he's trying to will air into Evan's burning lungs. "Shit--"

"I'm trying," Evan gasps horrifically, eyes squeezing shut like they're trying to save him the embarrassment. "I'm trying, sorry, I--"

Then Evan feels the carton and the water bottle being taken out of his hands, and his head being shoved down between his knees. There's a phantom of a hand running quickly up and down his back, like it's afraid of actually touching his sweaty skin through the fabric of his stupid, sweaty shirt, and this has got to be one of the worst possible ways this kind-of-sort-of friendship could end, and over one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for him, of all things--

"Shut up, Hansen," Connor snaps, but he presses his hand harder against his back and slows down. "Just--shut up and. Fuck, I don't know--do you need an inhaler? Do you even have an inhaler? Do you want me to, like, count breaths, or--"

Evan thinks he shakes his head, because Connor starts muttering curses under his breath before falling silent. His hand runs slowly up and down his back, and Evan imagines his long, weird fingers catching on the knobs of his spine, chipped black nails knocking into one another like a ragged train. He counts their slow journey from the small of his back to the bottom of his neck, up and down and up and down, until his chest unclenches itself and the roar in his ears fades into the sound of rustling fabric. When he looks back up, Connor's hand stills. "I'm, um--" Evan clears his throat. It sounds like he's been crying for hours. Which, for all intents and purposes, isn't not true. "I'm good. For now. Sorry for--"

"Hansen," Connor stuffs his hand into the pocket of his hoodie and rolls his eyes, "don't fucking apologize for crying or having a panic attack or whatever." He shoves the water bottle at him. "Drink some water."

Evan drinks some water. It catches on nearly every crevice and lump in his throat on the way down. "Thanks," he croaks.

Connor mumbles something that sounded like "No problem" or "No worries" or "No big deal." He has his legs crossed and his head tilted back up against the wall, staring blankly at the sky. Evan turns his attention to a loose thread on the edge of his shirt and forces himself to sip more water.

Evan mechanically finishes maybe half the bottle before Connor speaks again. "Does that happen often?"

"Does what happen often?"

Connor visibly fights off a scowl. He thankfully keeps his glare for the semi-clouds. "The panic attack. Or whatever that was."

"Oh. Uh," Evan pulls at the thread and manages to unfortunately unwind it from the rest of his shirt. He wraps it around his finger until it stings bright red. "Kind of. It happens more often when I'm really stressed or tired. Which, I guess you could say is...pretty often."

"Is that what your letter was supposed to help with?"

Evan somehow forgot that Connor still had his therapy letter. He tugs the thread tighter and winces. "Yeah," he croaks. "One of the things. Supposed to being the key word."

Connor's quiet for so long that Evan risks taking a look at him. And realizes that he's watching Evan choke his gross, blood-crusted, nail-bitten finger dark purple. So he lets the thread fall loose, and they both watch the color slowly drain back to the rest of his body until the bell rings.

Connor gets up quickly. He doesn't offer to help Evan as he scrambles to stand on his numb legs, but he doesn't move away either. "Thanks for coming by," Evan starts tentatively. "Sorry you had to--"

"What did I tell you about apologizing for shit like that?" Connor says without bite. He looks down at the carton in Evan's hands. "You better eat that before it gets stale."

"O.K.," Evan tries to move his mouth into something positive. "Thank you. It, um--that's really, really nice of you. I really appreciate it."

"Sure," Connor mumbles. He scuffs his boot on the ground in one harsh scrape. "Don't think that it's free, though. You owe me an email for that."

Evan can't help the surprised laugh that bursts from his mouth. Connor looks up sharply. "Sorry," Evan thinks he does manage to pull off a smile this time. "I'll be sure to pay my dues tonight."

Connor scours his face again in an open stare. Evan tries his best not to look away, and receives a small quirk at the edge of Connor's lips. "Good," he says, turning on his heels back towards the school.

"Well, I'll, um--" Evan calls out impulsively. "I'll see you around? Tomorrow, maybe?"

Connor pauses, but doesn't turn around. "Yeah. Same spot."

"Great," Evan exhales in relief. "Looking, um. Looking forward to it."

Connor waves a hand behind him as he disappears around the corner. Evan opens the carton again and stares at the waffle inside. He carefully picks up a blueberry between fingers slick with oil from the bottom of the box and bites down slowly. It's firm and sweet, the juice washing away the salt lining his throat. Maybe they kind of sort of actually are becoming friends.

Then the warning bell rings and Evan almost spills the entire carton on the ground. He manages to get to class with seconds to spare, sweaty and shaking and definitely getting stared at. But he puts the carton in his backpack, and finds that, at least for right now, he has better things to think about. Like the email he needs to compose. And the English quiz he also neglected to study for. And, oh _shit_, he absolutely didn't understand question thirty in the physics homework that was due in less than one hour--

By the time Evan is dragging himself to the computer lab to wait out the rush of people, he's half-delirious with exhaustion, trying to figure out how people manage to have a rich and full social life while also doing decently in school and maybe a few extracurriculars on the side. Like Alana, who he's mercifully only shared one other shift with at the call center so far--she proudly and emphatically told him and every caller she had (except for Lawrence, who started sobbing as soon as she picked up and didn't stop for the whole ten minutes) that she was covering for someone and somehow managed to squeeze in an extra shift between a Model UN competition and a PTSA committee meeting. Evan, on the other hand, is debating whether his lifelong overwhelming fear of inconveniencing people and making them hate him outweighs his equally overwhelming desire to skip his usual shift and just…not eat dinner, do homework, putt around sadly on the internet, and go to sleep. I.e., his usual routine, before Dr. Sherman decided that Evan was a great listener.

He's a few steps away from collapsing into one of the hard, uncomfortable blue plastic chairs that they may have chosen exclusively for the computer lab because they were so uncomfortable (as if that would be enough to deter people from bypassing the school firewall to dick around on Facebook or PornHub) when he notices someone who looks a lot like Jared sitting on one of said chairs chuckling at his phone, turned so that he's facing the door. Evan just stands there, marveling at the similarity of glasses frame and Aloha shirt and esoteric graphic tee. He's mostly convinced that it isn't Jared, because Jared says the school computers run at the speed of a geriatric snail and the WiFi is even worse. But then the Jared-look-alike looks up, and Evan realizes that it _is _Jared, and he doesn't think he's run this quickly in his entire life before.

"Evan, wait," Jared calls out. Evan does not look back to confirm that he's following him as he races down the hallway and out the front doors. "Evan, come on--"

Evan might have yelled back a perfunctory "Sorry" that even he couldn't hear over his own thundering heart. He sprints across the parking lot and down the sidewalk, in the general direction of 'as far away as possible' until he thinks he might be on the cusp of an asthma attack. His phone pings and vibrates against his sweaty leg and continues to do so for a full minute, no matter how many times he smashes his shaking fingers against the buttons through his pocket.

If it wasn't clear to Jared that Evan was deliberately avoiding him, it should be as blindingly clear as staring directly into the sun now.

Given that Jared knows where he lives, and there's only a few places Evan feels safe enough going to that doesn't have a high risk of needing to make awkward small talk or otherwise getting stared at, he decides to go straight to the call center and forget about his own problems by getting inundated with everyone else's. It takes him another exhausting and sweaty hour to get there, because he just had to run in the complete opposite direction. And when he does, he's practically dragged to a desk and gets a phone shoved against his ear, because he just had to have a shift at the Emotional Crisis Rush Hour.

Caroline wishes her parents were still alive. Lucas hates his housing complex but doesn't have the money to move. Sanjana thinks her grandchildren want to get rid of her. Danny broke his foot ten years ago but is still counting every metatarsal that he can't move. Skye is so, so, _so _lonely. He nods and apologizes and makes sympathetic sounds and clicks on checkboxes for so long that they all start to blur together into a single wail of general badness that makes his chest tight and his bones ache.

But he keeps on nodding and apologizing until Mei taps him on the shoulder and gives him 'rock on' sign before she walks swiftly out the door. Because apparently, Evan is now unofficially in charge until the night shift arrives until further notice. He picks up the next call with only mild despair and terror, all things considered.

"Did you go on vacation, Mark?" Connor says drily.

"Oh," Evan sits back up so quickly that his chair almost launches him face first back into the computer screen. "Hi, Connor. Sorry--no, I was, um, I wasn't feeling well. Did you call?"

"Yeah, and I got saddled with some eighty year old grandpa who sounded like he was going to keel over from hearing me say 'fuck' two sentences in a row." That would be Sven. Evan thought he was O.K., if only because he always gave him a nod on the rare times they made eye contact, and had absolutely no interest in making small talk with anyone. Which was ironic, given that at least sixty percent of this job consists of making small talk. "I hung up before he decided to call the Profanity Police on me."

"Sorry about that," Evan types in Connor's number and pulls up his profile. Sven's note on their three minute call is probably just as curt and displeased as Connor felt: '_Angry and rude. Hung up_.' "We have a, um. A variety of people who help out."

Connor snorts. "Good thing I got you on the first try, huh."

"Yeah," Evan tries not to think about what would have happened if he didn't get Evan that night. "Good thing."

"So," there's a loud crackle of static, and Evan can imagine the warm air pooling into the receiver, "remember that kid I told you about? The one with the letter I was planning to use as a suicide note, and then took out for fucking pancakes of all things?"

"Yeah--did he, uh," Evan tries to ignore how his heart is actively trying to punch itself out of his chest, "did he ask to eat lunch with you?"

"He did. Twice."

"That's great!" Evan says too loudly. "Right?"

There's a very long silence on the other end of the line, and Evan just knows he's fucked up, either because Connor knows who he is, or has already known who he is, or is definitely going to find out who he is, because he's pushed way too hard for them to try to kind of sort of be friends. "Connor?" He says carefully. "Are you--"

"I'm here," Connor snaps. "Let me think for a moment."

"Sorry," Evan winces. This was one of the things he still hated about phone calls, how insubstantial they are. He used to get chewed out at every shift because he got so worked up about silences that lasted longer than five seconds--he was never sure if he should hang up or call the police or try to fill the space with as much small talk as he possibly can, so he usually ended up asking if they were still there enough times for his caller to absolutely hate him.

Another full minute passes of Evan trying not to breathe heavily into the receiver while thinking about how it should technically be easier to talk on the phone, because people don't have to see how sweaty and nervous he actually is, before Connor speaks again. "I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"I don't know if it's good or not." There's a soft clacking in the background, like fingernails tapping against wood. "I think we're maybe becoming friends. If you count eating lunch together a few times as a sign that someone isn't being coerced into hanging out with you out of, like, pity or fear of being murdered by the school psychopath."

"I think that counts," Evan says as encouragingly as possible.

"Well, you probably don't have a lot of friends, do you, Mark?" Connor says drily.

Was he that obvious? "Well--"

"Fuck," there's another loud crackle of static, "sorry, I didn't mean--O.K., fine, I just think it's crazy that he's trying so hard to talk to me. I've been nothing but an asshole to him from day one, and I still don't know how to talk to him without either being a dick or going on a rampage every other minute. Nothing about me screams 'best friend material.' But here he is, forcing himself to sit with me even when he's on the verge of a mental breakdown. Which I had to go and turn into a full blown panic attack."

Evan's gross fingers finds the thread at the edge of his polo and tugs until it bites into his skin. "Did that, um--did that bother you? Him having a panic attack?"

"What do you think?" Connor drawls. "I thought he was going to pass out--which, thank fuck he didn't. My useless ass just, like, patted him on the back for ten minutes. Like that's so fucking helpful."

"But he stopped panicking right?" Evan suddenly needed Connor to understand that he was more than just helpful. It mattered so much that he pressed the phone harder against his face to get the receiver closer to his mouth, as if that would get the message across more clearly. "I'm sure he appreciated you just...being there. And trying."

Connor makes an unconvinced sound. "Trust me, he'd probably've been better off if I wasn't there--"

"That's not true! It sucks when there's nobody there when you're--when you're not feeling well. And I think--you don't need to do breathing exercises or anything, like, fancy and therapist-approved to be helpful. Just being there can be enough."

There's a long, slow creak and a dull thump, like maybe Connor is sitting back in his chair or bed or bumped his head or his knee against a wall. "Speaking from personal experience, Mark?"

Evan squeezes his eyes shut and wonders if he fucked up again. "Kind of," he half-lies. "I just know that you staying there was very kind of you and...and more than a lot of people can hope for, when they feel low. I'm sure it meant something to him--that you found him at that time, and you didn't run away."

Connor's breath washes through the receiver in slow, steady waves--one two, one two, one two. Evan holds his tongue between his teeth and waits for what feels like a very long time.

Then Connor says quietly, "If I'm being totally honest, it was almost gratifying to see that someone else was having as shit of a time as I was. Which is fucking terrible to say, I know. But it's the truth."

"No, yeah, I get it," Evan lets the loose string from his shirt unwind from his finger, the blood rushing back in desperate pulses. "Like you're not alone."

Connor hums, and there's another soft clacking sound. "I gave him a fucking waffle, like some sort of friendship offering. Can you believe that? I don't even know why I did that--he was so shocked, like this is the most random fucking thing. And now, I've been refreshing my inbox for the last few hours waiting for him to send me an email, like a pining loser." Connor laughs harshly. "Isn't that fucking pathetic?"

Shit. Evan totally should have sent the email at school. He opens a new tab tries to log in to his Gmail, typing in the wrong password at least five times because he's incapable of both panicking and multi-tasking at the same time. "No, that's not--of course that's not pathetic."

"If he ever sends it, this will be the first email I've gotten that isn't a robot trying to sell me dick enhancing drugs or threatening to sic the IRS on me if I don't give them my bank account number. Or like, Neopets telling me my fucking Kacheek is dying because I haven't fed it in ten years." There's another clack, which Evan realizes is Connor pressing the touchpad on his laptop very, very firmly. "If that's not pathetic, then I don't know what is."

Evan pauses in his attempt to unfold the slip of paper with Connor's email using just his elbows. "You played Neopets?"

"Shut the fuck up, Mark," Connor says without bite. "Like you didn't play Neopets when you were young and too shy--meaning, already debilitatingly mentally ill--to have actual friends."

"I was more of a, uh, Club Penguin kind of a kid." For some reason, Evan could kind of see Connor the kid who threw a printer at their third grade teacher playing Neopets alone in his room after school. "Though I never really talked to anyone." More accurately, he only talked to Jared, who had forced him to make an account, even though he couldn't do most of the things Jared was doing because he'd hit a paywall.

"Shit, did you hear that Club Penguin shut down? I legit went into a mourning period for, like, thirty whole minutes."

"Connor," Evan tries not to laugh, because he and Connor aren't really on laughing terms, "Club Penguin shut down three years ago."

"That doesn't make it any less sad," Connor scoffs above a series of loud taps. "You're so fucking cold, Mark. Everyone's probably forgot about them and moved on to Farmland or whatever bullshit games they have on Facebook."

"Well, but there's a bunch of spin-offs and memes." Evan knows, because there was a week where Jared started exclusively sending him obscure Club Penguin content when he heard there was a reboot. "They, like, left a legacy. Which means they aren't really forgotten, right?"

"Sure," Connor huffs. "But how long do you think that's gonna last? Give it a few more years, and even that will die." He lets out a short laugh over a succession of taps. "That'll probably be how my funeral goes, if I even get one—maybe a couple of people will be sad for a few weeks, and _maybe_ a handful of assholes will circulate a shitty meme about the school shooter finally offing himself. And then poof. Gone."

Evan stops breathing for a moment. He doesn't know how he almost forgot that this was the whole reason why he was even talking to Connor in the first place.

"Maybe that kid from school will remember me, though—as, like, the druggie obsessed with fucking breakfast foods, of all things. If he would just send me an email." An explosive slap of a hand against plastic, followed by a bloom of static. "He probably forgot. Or finally found his sanity and changed his mind. Figures."

"Of course not!" Evan starts frantically typing and retyping in Connor's email, because his fingers keep slipping between the _iop_'s and _ert'_s, and his hands are shaking too hard for him to hold the shift key long enough to enter an underscore. He backtracks his tongue in sync with the backspace. "Or, well, I mean, you don't know that. He might just be busy. With homework, or--or a part-time job, or something."

"Could you stop being so fucking rational for one minute, Mark?" There's a metallic scrape of maybe either his chair being pushed back against the floor, or his laptop getting shoved across his desk. "I get that most people have a life, O.K."

_'Dwer Cionnir Muepgy,' _shit, "That wasn't what I was trying to say--"

"I bet you've never talked to someone more pathetic than me, have you?"

_'Dtar' _no, '_Dqat'_ no, _'Daer'_ no, '_Dear Connit' _come _on--_"You're not pathetic, Connor."

"At this point, I think you're legally bound to say that--"

"I'm not lying!" Which is a first. Evan gives up in his attempt to type a single coherent sentence, because even autofill has no idea what he's trying to say. "Pathetic is like--is like me eating nothing but granola bar halves for a whole week because I'm too scared of ordering food over the phone, or ordering food online and then having to talk to the delivery person or--or, god forbid, the checkout clerk at the grocery store." He stares at the glistening, ragged stumps that used to be his nails and tries to resist the urge to chew on them further. "Trust me. You're not—you're definitely not pathetic. At all."

There's another very long silence. A hangnail he somehow missed is already trapped between Evan's incisors when Connor finally responds. "Granola bar halves?"

"Oh. Because if—because I only had one box left and, well. I had to make it last. One point five granola bars a day." Evan's neck burns with embarrassment. It sounds a lot more pathetic when he says it out loud. "It wasn't a good week." He tries for a laugh and it falls spectacularly flat.

"That...sounds really fucking terrible." Connor sounds almost concerned. Or maybe just surprised at just how pathetic Evan actually is. "Shit."

"Yeah, well." Maybe this was one way he could keep Connor alive, by strategically reminding him that things could be much worse. Using himself as an example. "I survived, somehow. So."

"How'd you get food, then?"

"My, uh—my mom found out," Evan winced. He still remembers how she yelled at him for not telling her, and then how horribly sad she looked. How he pretended that he didn't see her cry when she stuffed the freezer so full that night that the door wouldn't completely close. "She works a lot and isn't home very often. And probably didn't realize I was socially inept to the point of starving myself."

"What about your dad? Couldn't he, like, buy something? Or is he some kind of a patriarchal douchebag?"

"Oh, I don't know. He left when I was really small. But probably?"

"Oh. Sorry."

"All this to say," Evan adds hastily, before he can further dig himself into a hole of pity, "you're not pathetic. And—and you'll probably get an email soon."

"If you say so." Evan can absolutely hear Connor rolling his eyes. "But dude. You're not pathetic because you, like, hate talking to people and your dad is a piece of shit. At least you didn't try to kill yourself, like I did."

Evan squeezes his eyes shut and tries not to think about rattling bottles and cracking bones. "Touché."

"Seriously. Even if you did, you're badass as fuck—because look who's talking on the phone every week now. With a bunch of insane, suicidal assholes, even."

Evan never would have thought that he'd be getting a pep talk from Connor Murphy, of all people. A Connor Murphy who thinks he's badass and brave. "I'm still—I'm definitely still absolutely terrified every time I pick up the phone, and I'm pretty sure I'm doing a very bad job of talking to people. But thanks."

"Not as bad as me, I can fucking tell you that." There's a steady clicking sound, like maybe he's opening and closing a pen. "Otherwise, I wouldn't be waiting for an email that's never gonna come like a complete loser."

"Connor--"

"I know, I know, I'm an impatient idiot who should stop refreshing his fucking inbox." There's a muffled series of knocks and someone yelling indistinctly. "Goddamnit," Connor mutters, before yelling, "Give me five minutes, jesus christ--no, I'm not fucking _smoking_, I'm actually shooting up _heroin_ right now, oh my _fucking_ god--" There's another creak, followed by the sound of a drawer opening and closing, something slamming and rattling. "I'll let you go now. Dad came home and found some fresh new bullshit he wants to yell at me about."

"Sorry--"

"No one should be sorry that my dad is a fucking dick." There's another set of knocks, loud enough to sound like someone's tapping against the phone. "Could you calm the fuck down for one--yeah, go ahead and break down the door for all I care!" Connor snarls. "Bye Mark--if you don't hear from me in a week, that means my dad has either strangled me or I've finally drank the Kool-Aid. Literally."

"Wait, what do you mean by--"

There's a clack and the screen on the console flashes white. Call ended.

Evan puts the phone down on the table and slowly lets out a long, deep breath. The clock ticks heavily behind him, drumming out every lost second. His hands are still shaking, and he's not sure if it's from apprehension or exhaustion.

He knows that he should take a few more calls before his shift ends. He knows that he wants more than anything to go home and crawl into bed and stay there for at least the next few days. Instead, he opens his Gmail again and stares at the white vacuum of his unfinished, essentially unstarted draft.

'_Dear Connit Murphgy'_

Evan presses the backspace button maybe harder than strictly necessary and chews at a loose strip of dry skin desperately clinging to his lip. He starts typing slowly, deliberately--who actually starts an email with 'Dear' anymore? Or full names? 

**From:** ehansen_75332@gmail.com  
**To: **mirthco_98@gmail.com

_Hi Connor,_

_This is Evan. Sorry this took so long to send, I got caught up with homework. Thank you again for the waffle, and for sitting with me today. I really appreciate it._

_Looking forward to hearing from you soon!_

_Sincerely,_

_Evan_

He stares at it long and hard, adding and deleting the last exclamation point; debating on whether or not he should add a smiley face; switching between 'Sincerely' and 'Best' and 'Cheers' and 'Thanks' and 'Take care' and nothing at all; typing and retyping and erasing sentences on how it meant so much that he was there, how he's not someone you could easily forget, how he hopes they can call each other friends one day. He stares and tears at his lip until there's a metallic tang coating his tongue. 

Then he presses send.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise--I'm still here!
> 
> Thank you all for bearing with the lengthy hiatus--life just comes at you full force, ahaha. A word of warning that I likely will continue to post sporadically (i.e., not at all) in the next few months until I can get my shit together. Which will happen!
> 
> But in the meanwhile, I hope this somewhat very bare advancement of the plot is satisfactory. As always, comments, critiques, and suggestions are always welcome and very much appreciated! Thank you all so much for sticking around and for taking the time to read!
> 
> Happy (very belated) New Year--and see you at the next one!


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